Actel tends to play in the mainstream, value-based end of the FPGA market. That strategy offers a unique value proposition based on Actel's commitment to the use of flash memory. With an Actel FPGA, it's flash that holds the memory bits for configuration. DigiTimes.com spoke recently with Dennis Kish, senior vice president for Sales and Marketing, about the company's FPGA strategy, and in particular, the benefits of the flash-memory approach.
Kish also commented on new products, such as the company's Fusion programmable-system-chip (PSC) device, as well as the recent CoreMP7 soft ARM7 microprocessor core optimized for FPGAs. Put simply, Actel is now offering all the building blocks for a system-on-chip (SoC). FPGAs are on the move, says Kish, and today they're found in a myriad devices, from PDAs to LCD TVs.
This is Part IV of a four-part interview. Part I appeared on 10 March, Part II on 13 March and Part III on 14 March.
Q: You've already mentioned the wide range of technologies applicable to an SoC. Would you like to add any more comments, in the context of the CoreMP7 product?
A: I'd just like to add that in real-world scenarios, an SoC is a fairly complex device. The ASIC world moved in this direction quite a long time ago, where you would see both processors and mixed-signal content. Certainly, you would see analog blocks; you would see multiple memory types present on high-end SoCs. Our competition is not in a position to do much of that kind of integration because they very aggressively use standard CMOS processes, with very low operating voltages – in the neighborhood of 1 volt for state-of-the-art products. The process technology that we have gives us an additional advantage for doing a system on chip.
Q: Can you also comment on the memory requirement for an SoC? I understand that embedded memory occupies an increasing proportion of an SoC, currently running as high as 70% of the die.
A: It depends on who's supplying the SoC. Different ASIC vendors offer different memory technologies, but a long time back, ASICs started to go in the direction of having quite a large amount of RAM onboard. With some ASICs, the logic has to be tucked down in the corner somewhere; the rest is mostly RAM, and it differs according to the application
Our claim to fame at Actel, really, is that we offer flash-memory integration, and that is unique in the marketplace. We are the only FPGA vendor currently providing that, and that's a fairly differentiated technology.
Integrated flash memory is also a fairly valuable technology. The total flash-memory market has now grown in size to the point where it rivals DRAM as the number-one memory technology; it is far ahead of SRAM. I believe that recently Samsung put out a press release saying that their flash shipments had now surpassed their DRAM shipments, and that is a very significant milestone. The value of flash memory is very high, and we feel we're in a strong position since we're the only company offering it in the FPGA environment.
Q: Does flash come at a cost premium for you, or do you have techniques for off-setting that cost, such as purchasing in very large volumes?
A: We are a fabless manufacturer, so we buy the wafers. A couple of additional layers are required in each wafer, for a flash memory process, so we do pay for a couple of extra layers, but we get a sizable return on that by having a smaller memory cell.
Q: Would you like to add any more details about the differentiation of Actel from its competitors? The FPGA market is now seeing some differentiation based on non-volatile, instant-on FPGAs, and I'm wondering if Actel is offering solutions of that kind.
A: We're not only offering it, we are the leader in that market. The non-volatile and instant-on characteristics are precisely the ones that Actel was founded on, some 20 years ago, with antifuse technology, which has both of those characteristics. Of course, antifuse has limited appeal because it's only one-time programmable, so Actel responded by pioneering the use of flash memory, which is also non-volatile and live at power up. We’ve had flash-based products in the market for some five years, now, and we are the leader, in terms of market share there.
Q: Can you give any actual facts and figures about ranking in the non-volatile FPGA market, in terms of volumes or revenues?
A: We don't report the flash revenue separately – a decision made by our finance team. They lump our flash products together with our new products and report that as combined revenue. We have only one competitor that has a flash-based solution. I believe they’ve stated their revenue to be less than a million dollars, making them a relatively small competitor.
Q: That would be Lattice Semiconductor?
A: Yes.
Q: PLDs seem to be increasingly important. People tell me that mobile-phone applications are an increasingly important market for CPLDs, for instance. Is Actel active in CPLDs and PLDs, and if so, what developments are you seeing in the technology and the market? What is your response in terms of products and specifications?
A: The CPLD market is now blurring into the FPGA market. We don't have a traditional CPLD offering at all, but we do have FPGAs that are priced down in the US$1.50 range, and that is the price point generally associated with CPLDs.
The interesting thing about the CPLD market is that it has become an FPGA market. The two CPLD market-share leaders have recently scrapped their CPLD architectures and their state-of-the-art products are now based on an FPGA architecture. So, they are marketing a standard, LUT-based FPGA architecture with a non-volatile memory store as a CPLD. So, as I see it, the CPLD market, has ceased to exist; it has become a low-end FPGA market.
Q: And do you have any comments on the market drivers for that segment?
A: I think the only thing I can say is that at those price points you get quite high-volume runners. The good news is that now there is virtually no application that is off-limits to FPGA technology. You see adoption in mobile-phone handsets, for example, although there it's not so much the high-volume runners but more the specialized low-volume runners. You see them in PCs and in set-top boxes, applications that run into the multi-millions of units per year. FPGA technology is now appropriate for almost any volume use.
Q: It seems that FPGA companies now have to take specific steps for IP protection. What comments do you have on the need for security and IP protection?
A: As a non-volatile FPGA supplier, Actel is the leader in secure solutions. We actually pioneered the use of secure technology in FPGAs. There's a natural security hole in SRAM-based technology because the entire design itself will reside off-chip in another memory LUT, somewhere, when the power is turned off. Then, when the power is turned on, the complete design is transferred, through a trace on the board, over to the FPGA. So, that's about the least secure environment you can imagine. You'd only have to probe those traces to get the design information.
The fact that we have, in contrast, all of that design information in a single-chip device really gives us a big security advantage. But, we have not stopped there. In our flash technology, we've actually added several layers of security and put them all together under a banner that we call FlashLock. We have several security layers that enable customers to ensure that that device cannot be reverse engineered.
In addition to that, we have also secured the user's design information, in case they want to use that for system programming. We have an AES encryption security block inside our devices that has an embedded encryption key. The user can encrypt their new design image and even send it out over the Web, if they want, to a remote location and have the system re-program itself. That will be secure all the way to the system location, and then it's secured during programming itself. So we offer legal, secure solutions within the industry, and we have found that to be, increasingly, a significant differentiator.
This is Part IV of a four-part interview. Part I appeared on 10 March, Part II on 13 March and Part III on 14 March.
Dennis Kish, senior VP for Sales and Marketing, Actel
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Fusion programmable system chip (PSC) from Actel. Fusion integrates analog functions with flash memory, says Kish, “and that puts new use models into play for FPGA vendors.”
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Article edited by Chris Hall
