us 191 million fy 2009 1 founded 1985 key people location san jose ca united states products fpgas embedded processors operating income us 21.3 million fy 2009 1 net income us 46.2 million fy 2009 1 total assets us 307 million fy 2009 2 total equity us 233 million fy 2009 2 number of employees 500 3 website www.actel.com www.microsemi.com actel corporation formerly nasdaq actl now microsemi was a manufacturer of nonvolatile low power field programmable gate arrays fpgas 4 mixed signal fpgas 5 and programmable logic solutions . 6 7 8 it was headquartered in mountain view california with offices worldwide . actel corporation has been acquired by microsemi . contents 1 history and competition 2 technologies 3 controversy 4 references 5 external links history and competition edit actel became a publicly traded company in 1985 and became known for its high reliability and antifuse based fpgas used in the military and aerospace markets . 9 in 2000 actel acquired gatefield which expanded actel s antifuse fpga offering to include flash based fpgas . in 2004 actel announced it had shipped the one millionth unit of its flash based proasicplus fpga . 10 in 2005 actel introduced a new technology known as fusion to bring fpga programmability to mixed signal solutions . fusion was the first technology to integrate mixed signal analog capabilities with flash memory and fpga fabric in a monolithic device . 11 in 2006 to address the tight power budgets of the portable market actel introduced the igloo fpga . the igloo family of fpgas was based on actel s nonvolatile flash technology and the proasic 3 fpga architecture . 12 two new igloo derivatives were added in 2008 igloo plus fpgas with enhanced i o capabilities and igloo nano fpgas a low power solution at 2 w. a nano version of proasic3 also became available in 2008 . in 2010 actel introduced the smartfusion line of fpgas . smartfusion includes both analog components and a programmable flash based logic fabric within the same chip . smartfusion was the first fpga product to additionally include a hard arm processor core . 13 altera and xilinx are the other key players in the market however their main focus is on sram fpgas . lattice semiconductor is another competitor . 14 15 in november 2010 actel corporation was acquired by microsemi . 16 17 18 technologies edit actel s portfolio of fpgas is based on two types of technologies antifuse based fpgas axcelerator sx a ex and mx families and flash based fpgas fusion igloo and proasic3 families . actel s antifuse fpgas have been known for their nonvolatility live at power up operation citation needed single chip form factor clarification needed citation needed and security citation needed . actel s flash based fpga families include these same characteristics citation needed and are also reprogrammable and low power . citation needed actel also develops system critical fpgas rtax and proasic3 families including extended temperature automotive military and aerospace fpgas plus a wide variety of space class radiation tolerant devices . these flash and antifuse fpgas have high levels of reliability citation needed and firm error immunity clarification needed citation needed . controversy edit in march 2012 researchers from cambridge university discovered that a backdoor exists in the jtag interface of the proasic3 family of low powered fpgas . 19 they defended their theory at a cryptography workshop held in belgium in september 2012 . 20 references edit a b c actel actl annual sec income statement filing via wikinvest a b actel actl annual sec balance sheet filing via wikinvest corporate factsheet pdf . actel corporation . august 2009 . retrieved 2010 01 11 . dylan mcgrath eetimes . actel fpgas cut power drain to target mobile market . aug 30 2006 . retrieved june 12 2012 . paul buckley eetimes . micrium supports actel smartfusion fpgas . march 8 2010 . retrieved june 12 2012 . eetimes india . actel designs ip core for nonvalatile fpgas . mar 23 2006 . retrieved june 12 2012 . eetimes asia . seiko epson goes with actel fpgas for multimedia viewers . dec 10 2008 . retrieved june 12 2012 . eetimes asia . free controller cores roll for actel fpgas . feb 8 2007 . retrieved june 12 2012 . andrew hamm sj business journal . the sky s the limit for actel chips in planned european satellites . august 1 2003 . retrieved january 11 2010 . company release . actel achieves key milestone with its cost effective flash based fpgas ; company ships more than 1 million units archived august 29 2008 at the wayback machine . . march 29 2004 . retrieved january 11 2010 . eetimes . actel claims to usher in era of programmable system chip . july 18 2005 . retrieved january 11 2010 . company release . actel brings portable market in from the cold with industry s lowest power fpga family archived july 7 2011 at the wayback machine . . august 28 2006 . retrieved january 11 2010 . eetimes . actel rolls mixed signal fpga with hard arm core . march 2 2010 . retrieved may 25 2010 . electronics weekly . fpga pld . retrieved june 13 2012 . john edwards edn . no room for second place . jun 1 2006 . retrieved jan 10 2013 . microsemi press release microsemi completes tender offer for actel corporation archived march 5 2011 at the wayback machine . mark lapedus ee times . microsemi buys actel for 430 million . oct 4 2010 . retrieved jan 10 2013 . melissa korn wall street journal . microsemi to buy rival actel for 430 million . oct 4 2010 . retrieved jan 10 2013 . sergei skorobogatov . breakthrough silicon scanning discovers backdoor in military chip ches 2012 workshop on cryptographic hardware and embedded systems external links edit corporate website v t e programmable logic concepts asic soc fpga logic block cpld epld pla pal gal reconfigurable computing xputer soft microprocessor circuit underutilization languages verilog a ams vhdl ams vital systemverilog dpi systemc ahdl handel c psl upf palasm abel cupl openvera c to hdl flow to hdl myhdl jhdl ella companies accellera actel achronix amd aldec altera atmel cadence cypress duolog forte intel lattice national mentor graphics microsemi signetics synopsys magma virage logic texas instruments tabula xilinx products hardware ice stratix virtex software altera quartus xilinx ise xilinx vivado modelsim vtr simulators ip proprietary arc leon latticemico8 microblaze picoblaze nios nios ii open source latticemico32 opencores openrisc 1200 risc v jop retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title actel & oldid 742418354 categories electronics companies of the united stateselectronic design automation companiesfabless semiconductor companiescompanies formerly listed on nasdaqcompanies based in mountain view californiatechnology companies established in 1985hidden categories articles with wayback machine linksall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from march 2011wikipedia articles needing clarification from march 2011 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutschfran aisitaliano t rk e edit links this page was last modified on 3 october 2016 at 16 00 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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