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Microsemi Introduces SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA Starter Kits to Speed Product-Development Efforts

31st January 2013

ES Admin

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Microsemi Corporation today announced the availability of its SmartFusion2 Starter Kit, providing designers with a basic prototyping platform for the company's SmartFusion2 system-on-chip (SoC) field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The SmartFusion2 Starter Kit supports industry-standard interfaces including Ethernet, USB, SPI, I2C and UART and includes a comprehensive breadboard to support unique design requirements.

The kit can be used with Microsemi's Libero SoC v11.0 beta software, which includes a free Libero Gold license and comes preloaded with a uClinux demo. By using the included USB WiFi adapter, the kit has support for RaLink 5370 USB wireless radios, allowing uClinux to setup a wireless access point that serves DHCP WiFi connections.

Users can start a HTTPD server and then access the SmartFusion2 device via a smart phone web browser or other wireless device. Emcraft Systems' Linux-based development environment is also supported. The SmartFusion2 device is available on an Emcraft Systems miniature (34mm x 59mm) mezzanine form factor system-on-module (M2S-SOM), which connects to the SOM-BSB-EXT baseboard. The kit is USB powered, includes FlashPro4 programming and features the following user interfaces and capabilities:

-SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA in the FG896 package (M2S050T-FG896ES)
-10/100 Ethernet interface and RJ-45 connector
-USB OTG interface and mini-USB connector
-USB based Wi-Fi module
-64MB LPDDR, 16MB SPI flash
-User push-button connected to GPIO on the SOM
-Two user-controlled LEDs connected to GPIO on the SOM
-Breadboard area available for GPIO or FPGA I/O connection
-Power good LED indicating presence of the +3.3 V SOM power
-Reset push button, reset-out LED
-Depending on the design, can provide necessary power supply voltages (+5 V, +3.3 V, +1.5 V for power-optimized SOM operation) from external sources through dedicated pads on the breadboard

About SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs

Microsemi's next-generation SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs are designed to address fundamental requirements for advanced security, high reliability and low power in critical communications, defense, aviation, and industrial and medical applications. SmartFusion2 integrates inherently reliable flash-based FPGA fabric, a 166 megahertz (MHz) ARM Cortex-M3 processor, advanced security processing accelerators, DSP blocks, SRAM, eNVM and industry-required high-performance communication interfaces all on a single chip.