Actel's FPGAs achieve rigorous SAE/AS9100 aerospace certification

The folks at Actel say that they are continuing to provide the highest quality and reliability levels available to the aerospace and avionics markets by becoming the first field-programmable gate array (FPGA) vendor to achieve SAE/AS9100 certification.

Increasingly required by aerospace suppliers world-wide, Actel received the stringent AS9100 certification for its Quality Management System (QMS), which certifies that the company's processes related to design and manufacture of its low-power, programmable logic solutions have met or exceeded the required standard.

"Actel's SAE/AS9100 certification eases the part acquisition process for our aerospace and avionics customers around the world," said Ken O'Neill director of military products, for Actel. "Further, the achievement of this certification allows our customers to purchase Actel products with the confidence that they are getting the highest quality and reliability while ensuring their cost of ownership goals are met or exceeded."

Today, the aircraft industry is challenged with mandates to use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products to obtain cost benefits, yet tasked with meeting extremely high reliability goals. The AS9100 certification has the benefits of reducing costs and improving reliability by consolidating and standardizing the quality requirements and quality systems employed by suppliers to the aerospace and avionics industry.

The AS9100 standard was developed by Working Group 11 of ISO TC20 and was supported by the International Aerospace Quality Group in order to satisfy internal, government, and regulatory requirements.

Actel's FPGA offer flight-proven reliability
Aerospace and avionics applications require high levels of reliability while typically operating in a harsh environment. With more than 20 years of flight-proven reliability, Actel offers low-power flash- and antifuse-based FPGAs for use in aerospace and avionics applications.

The folks at Actel say that, unlike SRAM-based devices (which experience neutron-induced firm errors), their FPGAs offer immunity to neutron-induced configuration upsets, making them better suited to aerospace operational altitudes.

Actel's devices are also live at power up, allowing system-critical applications to recover immediately from power-out or brown-out conditions that can occur from lightning strikes, system or power supply glitches, neutron-induced system resets, and RF interference.

Click Here to view Actel's AS9100 certification and Click Here to view more information about Actel's aerospace and avionics offerings.