I had a briefing a few weeks back with Microsemi. These guys continue to innovate and impress. This briefing was to discuss their latest FPGA family, the Igloo2, which is aimed at industrial, commercial aviation, defense, communications, and security applications. This family takes advantage of non-volatile Flash memory to reduce the power consumption while increasing the security. Other features include general-purpose input/outputs (GPIOs), 5G SERDES interfaces, and PCI Express endpoints.

The company claims that "when compared to other 5G SERDES-based FPGAs under 150K logic elements, the Igloo2's high level of integration provides the lowest total system cost versus competitive FPGAs while improving reliability, significantly reducing power, and systematically protecting valuable customers' design IPs." The power savings comes via a unique Flash-Freeze real-time power management mode.

These FPGAs require only two power supplies, versus the three that are often needed for competitive devices. A combination of Microsemi and third-party design tools further simplify the process.

So if you have project that could take advantage of this technology, this family is worth a look.

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