Microsemi announces cost-optimized SmartFusion cSoC (mixed-signal FPGA)

The folks at Microsemi have just announced the availability of their cost-optimized SmartFusion mixed-signal FPGA, which they refer to as a customizable system-on-chip (cSoC) device.

The A2F060, available in commercial and industrial temperature grades, is designed for high volume applications such as motor and motion control, gaming machines, solar inverters, and clinical & imaging medical electronics.

"Expanding our award-winning SmartFusion family allows us to address a broader range of performance and cost requirements of a wide variety of embedded systems while maintaining core functionality," said Rich Kapusta, vice president terrestrial products, SoC Products Group at Microsemi. "Customers are able to standardize on highly integrated SmartFusion platforms, enabling them to offer a broad spectrum of low end to high end systems without sacrificing performance."

The newest family member in Microsemi's cSoC portfolio, the A2F060 device features 60,000 system gates, a hard 100 MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontroller subsystem with 128 Kbytes of embedded flash and 16 Kbytes of embedded SRAM, and programmable analog including one ADC, one DAC and two comparators. Additional key features include:

Microcontroller Subsystem

• 100 MHz, 125 DMIPS throughput with 128 Kbytes flash and 16 Kbytes SRAM
• Dedicated external memory controller, two of each: SPI, UART, 32-bit timers

Programmable Analog

• One 12-bit SAR ADCs with up to 11 channels and 500 Ksps sampling speed including 8-/10-bit modes and sample and hold
• One 12-bit sigma-delta DAC with 500 Ksps update rate
• Two clock conditioning circuits (CCCs) and one integrated analog PLL with phase shift, multiply/divide, and delay capabilities; and input frequency range from 1.5 to 350 MHz
• Two bipolar high-voltage monitors (with four input ranges from +/-2.5 V to -11.5/+14 V) with 1 percent accuracy

Digital FPGA Fabric

• 350 MHz system performance; 60 K system gates and 36 Kbytes SRAM
• Create additional standard interfaces or proprietary interfaces using high speed FPGA I/Os and gates
• Up to 107 user I/Os including FPGA, microcontroller GPIO and analog I/Os

Microsemi's SmartFusion cSoCs are the only devices that integrate an FPGA, a complete microcontroller built around a hard ARM Cortex-M3 processor and programmable analog, enabling full customization, IP protection and ease-of-use.Based on Microsemi's proprietary flash process, SmartFusion devices are ideal for hardware and embedded designers who need a highly integrated SoC that provides more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers, and significantly reduces the cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs.

Pricing and availability
SmartFusion A2F060 devices are offered in FG256 and CS288 leaded and lead-free ROHS-compliant packages. Microsemi offers development kits and evaluation kits based on larger members of the family enabling quick prototyping vehicles. An evaluation kit based on the A2F200 device is available for $99 (A2F-EVAL-KIT), and a development kit based on the A2F500 device is priced at $999 (A2F500-DEV-KIT).

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