Actel Corp.’s Low-Power FPGA Board

Actel Corp. has produced an ultra low-power field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for portable solutions. The company's 5-microwatt Icicle Kit was created to help designers rapidly program, evaluate and modify their low-power IGLOO-based portable devices. The board is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The Icicle evaluation board consumes less than 1/7 of the power of most development solutions in a design the size of a small cell phone.

This environmentally friendly RoHS-compatible solution integrates a nonvolatile 125,000-gate AGL 125 IGLOO FPGA. The board includes the built-in rechargeable battery, USB-to-UART interfaces and power-management circuits. The kit also includes a sophisticated programming stick for extended programming functionality.