Actel presents battery-powered Icicle kit

In order to highlight the advantages of their low-power field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for portable solutions, the folks at Actel just announced their new Icicle Kit.

Leveraging the company's 5-microwatt (µW) IGLOO FPGA, the kit showcases the ultra low-power attributes, flexible implementation options, and battery-saving advantages of IGLOO devices for portable applications.

The $99 kit allows designers to easily and rapidly program, evaluate, and modify their low-power IGLOO-based portable designs. Powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the 1.4" × 3.6" Icicle evaluation board is claimed to consume less than one-seventh the power of competitive FPGA development solutions in a design the size of a small cell phone.

The Icicle board is an environmentally-friendly, RoHS-compliant solution that integrates a nonvolatile, 125,000-gate AGL125 IGLOO FPGA. The board includes the built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, USB-to-UART interfaces, and power management circuits.

In addition to the Icicle evaluation board, the kit includes a sophisticated programming stick for extended programming functionality.

Also offered is a free, unlimited-use license for the Actel Libero Integrated Design Environment (IDE) Gold edition. This enables designers using the Icicle Kit to take advantage of the advanced power analysis tools recently introduced with Actel's Libero IDE v8.1 (see Programmable Logic DesignLine article 203103170) to identify key sources of power in their designs.

Other kit elements include user's guide and tutorial, printed circuit board (PCB) schematics, layout and sample design.

Pricing and availability
The Icicle Kit is available immediately from Actel for $99.