Axcelerator Family FPGAs
General Description
Axcelerator offers high performance at densities of up to
two million equivalent system gates. Based upon the
Actel AX architecture, Axcelerator has several system-
level features such as embedded SRAM (with complete
FIFO control logic), PLLs, segmentable clocks, chip-wide
highway routing, and carry logic.
This completely eliminates the channels of
routing and interconnect resources between logic
modules (as implemented on traditional FPGAs) and
enables the efficient sea-of-modules architecture. The
antifuses are normally open circuit and, when
programmed, form a permanent, passive, low-
impedance connection, leading to the fastest signal
propagation in the industry. In addition, the extremely
small size of these interconnect elements gives the
Axcelerator family abundant routing resources.
The very nature of Actel's nonvolatile antifuse
technology provides excellent protection against design
pirating and cloning (FuseLock technology). Cloning is
impossible (even if the security fuse is left
unprogrammed) as no bitstream or programming file is
ever downloaded or stored in the device. Reverse
engineering is virtually impossible due to the difficulty of
trying to distinguish between programmed and
unprogrammed antifuses and also due to the
programming methodology of antifuse devices (see
Device Architecture
Actel's AX architecture, derived from the highly-
successful SX-A sea-of-modules architecture, has been
designed for high performance and total logic module
utilization (Figure
Unlike in traditional FPGAs, the
entire floor of the Axcelerator device is covered with a
grid of logic modules, with virtually no chip area lost to
interconnect elements or routing.
Programmable Interconnect
Element
The Axcelerator family uses a patented metal-to-metal
antifuse programmable interconnect element that resides
between the upper two layers of metal (Figure
Routing
Switch
Matrix
Logic Block
Sea-of-Modules
Architecture
Traditional FPGA
Architecture
Logic
Modules
Figure 1-1 •
Sea-of-Modules Comparison
v2.7
1-1
ACTEL [ Actel Corporation ]
