Actel Corporation has released its nonvolatile field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The live at power-up (LAPU) nature of Actel's nonvolatile FPGA technologies makes them optimal solutions for automotive, consumer, medical, military and other applications. Further, to help simplify selection of LAPU devices Actel has created a LAPU classification system to quantify initialization capabilities of various semiconductor solutions.
The Actel LAPU device classification system has three levels: live at power-up (Level 0), live after power-up (Level 1) and live after system initialization (Level 2). Level 0 LAPU devices are operational between power-on and power-up (the time at which the applied voltage has reached the lower limit of system voltage and is stable) and include Actel's devices and other nonvolatile FPGAs, ASICs and some ASSPs. Level 1 LAPU devices require a configuration download from internal memory but are operational before system initialization and include ASSPs, flash-in- package SRAM FPGAs and most CPLDs. Level 2 LAPU devices are operational only after the initialization of system clocks, resets, interfaces and memories and include most SRAM-based FPGAs and processors.
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