Handheld Portable Solutions

The portable electronics in consumer, medical, industrial and military markets are experiencing rapid growth driven by the benefits of added convenience and increased productivity. Portable electronics design is becoming more challenging as new product revisions require additional features and improved performance while demand for longer battery life increases. These demands in the portable market include low active and static power consumption, small footprint packages, design security, higher integration, and live at power-up.

Actel low-power FPGAs are ideal for next-generation handheld systems, such as cameras, smartphones, portable media players and barcode scanners. Actel offers the optimal solution for your portable design with its FPGAs, solutions, and Intellectual Property (IP).

» Learn more about Actel IGLOO FPGAs in Handheld Devices

• Industry's lowest power FPGAs - extend battery life with Actel's IGLOO FPGAs and use flexible system implementation options for system power reduction
• Small-footprint packages (as small as 3x3 mm) - help minimize board size
• Single-chip implementation - offers lowest total system cost
• Design security - in-system programmability protects your intellectual property
• Live at power-up – results in immediate system operation
• Higher integration and system power optimization with ARM® Cortex™-M1 processor and Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGA support
• Tools and IP available for improved productivity

Actel FPGAs are used in a wide variety of handheld portable applications in consumer, medical, industrial and military end-markets.

Storage - Interface to Multiple Standards

Storage devices such as flash memory cards are becoming an integral part of portable consumer electronic devices. Actel and its partners offer multiple validated and proven IP cores for quick and easy integration of storage interfaces on flash FPGAs.
» Learn more about Actel FPGA-based storage solutions

Display and Imaging

The handheld market has seen a surge in liquid crystal display (LCD) usage as a result of the increased popularity of personal media players, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other handheld devices. LCDs are also widely used in medical devices, automotive applications, and industrial and military equipment. Actel's flash line of ultra-low-power, reprogrammable FPGAs provides solutions to address these challenges.
» Learn more about Actel's FPGA-based display and imaging solutions

HMI

In newer portable devices, HMI interfaces such as alphanumeric or QWERTY keypads, touch keypad and displays with white or color LED backlighting, programmable keys and switches, joysticks, scroll wheels, buzzers, and speakers are becoming more and more prevalent. Actel's line of ultra-low-power, reprogrammable flash FPGAs provide smaller form factors, improved battery life and flexibility solutions to enhance HMI interface in portable devices.
» Learn more about Actel's FPGA-based HMI solutions

Miniature Motor Control

Portable devices using miniature motor control are growing dramatically. They are used in consumer, automotive, medical, and industrial applications, offer a small form factor and substantial cost savings. Actel's IGLOO low-power FPGAs are an ideal solution for the control of miniature motors.
» Learn more about Actel's FPGA-based miniature motor control solutions

IP Protection, Data and Voice Encryption

Some portable applications require the use of data or voice encryption for secured communication. Flash FPGAs allow the integration of customer proprietary IP and security keys in one device, utilizing secured FlashLock® and user nonvolatile memory technologies.
» Learn more about Actel's design security solutions

System Power Control and Power Sequencing

In handheld portable applications, Actel FPGAs can be used for power supply control and system supervisory activities. Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs manage system power efficiently by controlling and monitoring power rails and powering down unused functions while the system is idle. Actel's Mixed-signal Power Manager (MPM) reference design demonstrates configurable power management in Fusion FPGAs as small as the AFS090. IGLOO FPGAs support Flash*Freeze mode, an ultra-low power mode that reduces power consumption to as low as 2 µW. Furthermore, IGLOO FPGAs can be used to supervise and control the system and look for a user stimulus while other devices are powered down, consuming little power and operating with a low-frequency clock.
» Learn more about Actel's power management solutions

Intellectual Property

A wide range of Actel IP cores and partner cores are available for portaable applications. These flexible cores can be implemented in either Verilog or VHDL and are available for free in the Libero IDE catalog.

Actel IP Cores	Description
CoreAhbSram	On-chip AHB SRAM memory controller
CoreAPBSRAM	On-chip APB SRAM memory controller
CoreGPIO	General purpose input/output
CoreI2C	I2C Master/Slave Interface
CoreMBX	AHB to APB mailbox interface
CorePCIF	PCI specification 3.0 bus controller with FIFO
CorePWM	Pulse width modulation core
CoreSPI	Serial peripheral interface
CoreUART	Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter

Partner IP Cores	Description
Athena	Cores for data security
Attodyne	Cores for portable video applications
CAST	Cores for portable storage applications
Eureka Technology	Cores for portable memory controllers
iWave	Cores for portable storage applications
iWave	Cores for portable video applications

» Search for Portable IP cores

Evaluation Kits for Handheld Portable Applications

• The Actel IGLOO Icicle Kit is truly a portable evaluation platform, powered by a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and enables you to measure power consumption (dynamic, static, and Flash*Freeze) with the core operating at either 1.2 V or 1.5 V.
  • The HMI Daughter Card for Actel IGLOO Icicle Evaluation Kit demonstrates the IGLOO FPGA as a flexible HMI controller, including keypad control, brightness control for white LEDs, color mixing for RGB LEDs, and tone generation.
  • The Miniature Motor Control Daughter Card for Actel IGLOO Icicle Evaluation Kit utilizes the IGLOO FPGA as a flexible motor controller for miniature brushless DC and stepper motors.
• The Actel IGLOO Video Demo Kit showcases the IGLOO FPGA as a flexible LCD controller that interfaces with several video/image sources, such as a digital visual interface (DVI) input and a CMOS sensor interface and allows you to build your own customized LCD adapter board.

Actel Comprehensive Power Analysis Tools

Actel provides accurate, comprehensive power analysis tools for its FPGAs. These tools offer accurate prediction and straightforward analysis of design options to help meet your portable system needs.

The pre-netlist power calculator tool helps in analyzing design implementation options for rapid power analysis scenarios and design partitioning.

The netlist-based SmartPower tool can help in quickly managing and optimizing portable design to the product's best power-saving capabilities. This power analysis tool provides a comprehensive interface for easily realizing the static and dynamic power performance of a portable design. Power reports are broken down by net, gate, I/O, memory, clock, core static, instance, and power rail. A design-level power summary includes average and peak switching activity, ambient temperature, and junction temperature readings, offering the ability to optimize FPGA power and behavior and thereby reduce total system power.

SmartPower is part of the industry-leading Libero Integrated Design Environment (IDE) toolset.

SoftConsole is Actel's free software development environment, enabling the rapid production and debug of C and C++ executables for ARM Cortex-M1 and Core8051s designs.

For FPGA-related documents, visit their respective Documentation page.

White Papers

	FPGA Reliability and the Sunspot Cycle White Paper			9/2011	Click on the to rate this document
	Size, Reliability and Security: The Essential Ingredients for Medical Devices White Paper			8/2011	Click on the to rate this document
	Secure Foundations White Paper			12/2010	Click on the to rate this document
	Single-Event Upsets (SEUs) and Medical Devices White Paper			12/2010	Click on the to rate this document
	Putting Low Power and Flexibility Where It Matters Most: Handheld Portable Applications White Paper			3/2010	Click on the to rate this document
	Developing Embedded Applications with ARM Cortex-M1 Processors in Actel IGLOO and Fusion FPGAs White Paper		548 KB	3/2009	Click on the to rate this document
	Power-Aware FPGA Design White Paper		1 MB	2/2009	Click on the to rate this document
	Incredible Shrinking Medical Devices White Paper		316 KB	10/2008	Click on the to rate this document
	Competitive Programmable Logic Power Comparison White Paper		1 MB	4/2008	Click on the to rate this document
	The Many Flavors of Low-Power, Low-Cost FPGAs White Paper		517 KB	4/2008	Click on the to rate this document
	The New "Power-Smart" Power Paradigm White Paper		210 KB	7/2007	Click on the to rate this document
	Reducing System Power White Paper		33 KB	8/2006	Click on the to rate this document

Product Information Brochures (PIB)

	Solutions for the Handheld Portable Applications Brochure		1 MB	12/2009	Click on the to rate this document
	Industry's Lowest Power FPGAs Fact Sheet		143 KB	10/2008	Click on the to rate this document
	Power Top Ten		173 KB	10/2008	Click on the to rate this document
	Total System Power Brochure		482 KB	10/2008	Click on the to rate this document

Selector Guides

Terrestrial FPGA and SoC Product Catalog

1 MB

10/2011

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