Actel announced the availability of an starter kit for its family of flash-based, reprogrammable ProASIC Plus field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Actel now offers an evaluation board with a 300K-gate ProASIC Plus FPGA in a PQ208 package. The new ProASIC Plus starter kit also includes a FlashPro Lite programmer and First Silicon Solutions' (FS2's) Logic Navigator software for debug. The Logic Navigator software uses the programmer already included in the ProASIC Plus starter kit, requiring no additional debug hardware, thereby providing designers to evaluate both the ProASIC Plus device and the debug capabilities of the software. The complete starter kit consists of an evaluation board with a 300K-gate APA300 ProASIC Plus device, Actel Libero Gold integrated design environment (IDE), the FlashPro Lite programmer, Logic Navigator software CD, programming cables, power supply, software, tutorials and support documentation. Licenses for Logic Navigator are available from FS2 for a free 45-day evaluation period at any time the user wishes to use the debug feature. Within the Actel Libero Gold IDE, customers will have access to Mentor Graphics' ModelSim simulation and design verification software, Synplicity's Synplify synthesis software, and the Actel Designer Series place-and-route software. Designers will also have the ability to generate a STAPL file that can be used for programming the kit's evaluation board using Actel's low-cost programmer. The enhanced ProASIC Plus starter kit will be available by the end of the year for $249.
