Microsemi Unveils 65-nm Embedded Flash Platform

Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq:MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor technology aimed at building a secure, smart, connected world, announced that its SOC Products Division, formerly known as Actel Corporation, today unveiled its new 65nm embedded flash platform, on which the company's next generation flash-based customizable SOCs (system-on-chips) will be built. Featuring a new, expandable 4-input LUT architecture, the company's low power, intelligent mixed signal and system critical series of SOCs will converge on state-of-the-art 65nm embedded flash process. Densities will increase an order of magnitude, offering twice the performance when compared to the previous generation. The new platform will maintain the company's low power leadership, providing 65 percent lower dynamic power while enhancing the Flash*Freeze feature to provide lower static current. Future devices will include industry-standard bus interfaces and also allow integration of hardened intellectual property such as embedded microprocessor cores, DSP blocks, high speed transceivers, memory interfaces, nonvolatile flash memory and programmable analog.

More and more, the demand for low power, firm error immunity, security and integration are non-negotiable in today's designs, said Esam Elashmawi, vice president of product development at Microsemi's SoC Products Division. With the move to 65nm, the increase in density and improvements in power and performance allow us to target a much larger portion of the industrial, medical, mil/aero, avionics, communications and consumer markets.

Microsemi and UMC are first to market with the 65-nm embedded flash process. First commercial silicon is already in house, with availability expected first half of 2011. Microsemi's SOC Products Division is concurrently launching its customer lead program for early adopters in the commercial and industrial markets who want early access to emerging technology for their next generation designs.

Flash in Space
With over 20 years of commitment and innovation in the space and avionics industry, Microsemi's SOC Products Division, formerly known as Actel, fortifies its stronghold in the control systems of satellites. We intend to extend our leadership in the market, targeting payload applications where performance, density and signal processing capabilities are key requirements, continued Mr. Elashmawi. The reprogrammability and unparalleled reliability of our nonvolatile, flash technology is a very compelling solution.

Microsemi also offered a sneak peek at the next generation radiation tolerant (RT) flash-based SOCs. The 4th generation RT FPGAs will feature up to 20 million gates, offering a larger array of flip-flops, memory and hardened embedded IP cores. The devices will include digital signal processing (DSP) blocks, PLLs and high speed interfaces (such as SpaceWire, DDR2/3, PCI Express) to get data on and off chip quickly and efficiently. The new flash-based FPGA architecture provides mitigation to total dose radiation and single event effects (SEE). When compared to SRAM FPGAs, Microsemi's radiation-tolerant flash-based FPGAs have intrinsic configuration immunity to single event upsets (SEU), removing the need for board level mitigation schemes.

Due to the normally long design cycles in the space industry, the company has been engaging with customers for over a year now regarding the next generation space-flight FPGAs. The 5th Worldwide Actel Space Forum Series will kick off on December 2, 2010 in Los Angeles.