Date: 09/11/2010

New 65nm embedded flash platform from Microsemi

Microsemi has unveiled its new 65nm embedded flash platform to build flash-based customizable SOCs (system-on-chips). The future devices to take birth on this new platform includes industry-standard bus interfaces and also allow integration of hardened intellectual property such as embedded microprocessor cores, DSP blocks, high speed transceivers, memory interfaces, nonvolatile flash memory and programmable analog, says Microsemi. Microsemi gained entry in SoC and FPGA area of semiconductor chip technology after recently acquiring ACTEL.

"More and more, the demand for low power, firm error immunity, security and integration are non-negotiable in today's designs," said Esam Elashmawi, vice president of product development at Microsemi's SoC Products Division. "With the move to 65nm, the increase in density and improvements in power and performance allow us to target a much larger portion of the industrial, medical, mil/aero, avionics, communications and consumer markets."

Microsemi's 4th generation RT FPGAs are expected to feature up to 20 million gates where they include digital signal processing (DSP) blocks, PLLs and high speed interfaces (such as SpaceWire, DDR2/3, PCI Express).