Actel Corporation (Mountain View, California, USA) has introduced its free Mixed-Signal Power Manager (MPM), which is a reference design and graphical user interface (GUI) tool included in the Fusion Advanced Development Kit.

MPM enables designers to control and reduce power at the system level, offering fully-verified, timing-closed, proven-in-hardware power supervision and management capabilities. The latest offering highlights the significant integration benefits of Actel's Fusion device, the industry's first mixed-signal FPGA.

"The Mixed-Signal Power Manager allows designers to absorb the functionality of standalone power management devices and digital FPGAs into a single mixed-signal FPGA," said Rich Kapusta, vice president marketing and business development. "This functionality enables a reduction in cost, board area, and development time. In addition, customers can easily experiment with the capabilities of Fusion mixed-signal devices for power management and sequencing, without having FPGA design expertise."

Designers can configure power management sequencing, levels, or thresholds using an easy-to-use standalone GUI tool, which also enables the user to program the MPM design into the Fusion device. Designers using MPM can replace discrete power management devices, add more flexibility by leveraging Fusion's reprogrammable flash FPGA technology, and reduce total parts count at the board level. MPM delivers highly-configurable, integrated power management using one high-reliability low-power flash-based Fusion mixed-signal FPGA.

To aid in the design and use of Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs, the Fusion Advanced Development Kit enables designers to quickly and easily start their development and showcases the MPM functionality with four onboard power regulators and supporting infrastructure. These four regulators function as independent power supplies controlled by the MPM. Additional regulator control channels and digital I/O can be accessed using on-board mixed-signal or digital headers.

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Mixed-Signal Power Manager

Actel's Power Management solutions

Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs