Actel announced a power management solution for its SmartFusion mixed signal FPGAs. The Mixed Signal Power Manager (MPM) Solution includes a complete reference design with graphical configurator to enter power sequencing and trimming requirements. The design takes full advantage of the capabilities of SmartFusion devices and is targeted to the MPM Daughter Card which can be used with either the SmartFusion Evaluation Kit or SmartFusion Development Kit.

The SmartFusion MPM solution delivers power management that is configured via a configuration GUI, enabling system designers to effortlessly integrate and configure intelligent power management with their ARM Cortex-M3 based embedded designs. Actel’s graphical design configuration approach enables power management thresholds to be set, voltage trimming to be configured and sequencing functionality to be updated without changing the circuitry programmed into the FPGA fabric.

SmartFusion MPM demonstrates power-up sequencing, management and power down sequencing of up to 32 independent power regulators (rails) with 8 rails supporting closed loop voltage trimming using PWM. Also demonstrated are five user configurable flags per regulator channel, exponential decay filtering, and up to 32 digital ‘trigger’ outputs using single level combinatorial logic, enabling the combination of internal states with 32 corresponding off-chip digital inputs to build complex system-level state signaling.

Available for purchase now are the SmartFusion Evaluation Kit (A2F-EVAL-KIT, list price $99), SmartFusion Development Kit (A2F-DEV-KIT, list price $999) and MPM Daughter Card Kit (MPM-DC-KIT, list price $299).