Get in on the act

The price of oil nudging towards $150 per barrel, coupled with higher petrol, gas and electricity prices, is an increasingly unpleasant prospect. Yet at least one semiconductor company sees an opportunity to help alleviate the situation. “Five years ago,” said John East, president and ceo of programmable logic developer Actel, “we did one thing right – we concluded the future was in energy conservation. We believed our flash based technology was better than the sram approach taken by the competition and started designing a range of parts aimed at low power applications, including power management devices and low power products.” It’s an approach that appears to have served Actel well. The sector has seen fierce competition over the years, with a number of well known names leaving the market. East believes that Actel has now taken over the number three slot in the programmable logic sector, whilst admitting it’s only a four horse race. For an American ceo, East is forthright about energy usage. “The US is the most abusive nation in the world when it comes to power – it’s someone else’s job to save it. That means we need to stop relying on someone else’s oil. Global warming is here,” he continued, “it’s real and we’ve got to stop doing it.” For his part, East is converting Actel’s Mountain View headquarters to be powered by solar energy. “We’re shutting down to change to solar panels and will be self sustaining,” he claimed, “generating more power than we need.” East has also converted his house to solar power. Actel is aiming its products at what East calls the ‘conventional’ market – industrial, medical and transportation. “But, increasingly, we’re seeing the hand held market taking interest. It’s mostly consumer, but not always. And we’ve made a good play in that market in the last year or so.” That ‘good play’ involves a range of fpgas which consume about 1000 times less static power than those available from Xilinx and Altera, said East. Actel is addressing power management through its Fusion range. “Big boards typically have up to eight power supplies, with step downs and so on,” East noted. “Why? We don’t want to, but they are there because it’s so complicated, controlling ramp ups and monitoring components. The job for the future is to be smart about how power is being used. Fusion has many applications, but we’re getting the most interest in power control on big boards.” At the other end of the scale, East sees great opportunity in hand held devices – ‘every one knows it’s going to be big business’. “If you look at a mobile phone,” he said, “there’s going to be a processor – probably an ARM core. You need to interface a keyboard to that, but there’s a lot of keyboards. You need an lcd, but there’s a lot of them. Then there’s USB, Bluetooth, memory cards, cameras and so on. “This is an opportunity for programmable logic to do this interfacing. But the first thing manufacturers look for is cost, then power. And plds can be cheap, low power interfaces.” Yet, with devices already available for less than $1 and with static power consumption in the order of microWatts, Actel is poised to push these figures. “High volume people worry about area and cost,” East asserted. “We’re close to making an announcement that will see fpgas with the lowest power, area and cost,” he concluded.