Welcome to SmartNews
Remember Brian Fuller, once editor in chief of EETimes? He’s now an industry mouthpiece, spreading his views on the world in newsletters like Low-Power Design Community and his own industry blog, Greeley’s Ghost. Brian’s one of the few who has all 10 fingers on the pulse of the industry—with access to boardrooms, conference rooms and clean rooms. This week he guest-writes for SmartNews. Read on.
Actel SmartNews Team
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Flash in the Pan? Hardly - By Brian Fuller
The FPGA business has relentlessly reinvented itself since its inception three decades ago. The promise of bringing cost-effective flexibility to design engineers has been so alluring that dozens of companies have tried their hand at the business since the early 1980s. The charred hulks of most of those attempts litter the landscape. Remember Crosspoint? Concurrent Logic? Even Intel was in the business.
The vendors who remain today each have their value propositions based on technology, market focus and heritage. In the old days, arguments erupted on whether fuse or antifuse was better; logic elements or gates.
Today, the one remaining argument centers on SRAM versus flash-based approaches to the FPGA fabric. In design engineering, there are and always will be trade-offs. No one approach serves as the silver bullet for system engineers. It's worth taking a look at what flash brings to the table, especially as design moves toward lower power considerations. |
Read the full article: |
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Read Brian's full article: Flash in the Pan? Hardly |
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Cosmic Rays and Neutrons and Alpha Particles, Oh My!
What if your design had to go close to the sun? Would you be comfortable? Engineers design for system-level reliability when creating complex electronic systems. System reliability is dependent on a number of factors, including the reliability of the individual semiconductor devices selected for each design. Radiation effects impact device reliability in terrestrial as well as space applications. By choosing FPGA components judiciously, designers can significantly enhance the operational reliability and stability of any system. |
Choose highly reliable FPGA devices for your most challenging applications: |
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Read the FPGA Device Reliability and the Sunspot Cycle White Paper |
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