Actel poised to attack a $21B market!

Written by Clive Maxfield March 02, 2010 Hits: 628 Favorites

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Well, that got your attention – didn’t it? Now, you may say that I'm being a little dramatic here (OK ... it's true ... I am being a little dramatic here), but it seems to me that Actel are certainly in a good position to grab a great big piece of this pie...

According to Gartner, the semiconductor market-size forecast for 2010 includes $3.6B for FPGAs, $6.1B for analog, and a whopping $12B for microcontrollers.

An interesting mix of markets

Of course the Hot News today was when the folks at Actel announced their new family of SmartFusion mixed-signal FPGAs with embedded ARM Cortex-M3 hard processor cores.

Now, I'm not suggesting that SmartFusion FPGAs are going to dominate the FPGA, Analog, and Microcontroller markets. On the other hand, having up to 500,000 system gates of programmable digital fabric, coupled with programmable analog/mixed-signal fabric, and augmented with an ARM Cortex-M3 hard processor core – all in a single device – simply has to be a very enticing option for a wide range of applications (System Management, Power Management, Motor Control, Industrial Automation, Display...) in a bunch of market segments (Industrial, Medical, Energy, Communications, Military, Computing...)

I think the guys and gals at Actel have got something really cool here – not the least that the SmartFusion Design Environment will allow lots of folks from small to large design houses implement some very innovative designs quickly, easily, and affordably – an attractive proposition whichever way you cut the pie!

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What about pricing and packaging options?

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Reviewed by Jaime Aranguren
March 09, 2010

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The SmartFusion offering is an interesting one, no doubt about this, but.. are the packaging and pricing options as compelling as the device's features itself? Could not find much information about that, only saw that the starter kit has a huge BGA IC, which is not very interesing for the kind of apps that the SmartFusion might be targeting. I hope I am wrong, and there are much more interesting, easy to handle and not so expensive options.

Cheers,

JaaC

Written by :

Clive Maxfield