Microsemi Announces Availability of Its Low-cost IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit with PCI Express Demo Designs and Tutorials

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Sept. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced the availability of its low-cost IGLOO^®2 FPGA Evaluation Kit, providing customers with a PCI^® Express (PCIe) compliant form factor evaluation platform. This full feature kit enables designers to quickly evaluate the integration, low power, security, instant-on and high reliability features of Microsemi's recently announced IGLOO2 FPGAs.

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The IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit includes a PCIe control plane demonstration design that streamlines and accelerates the development of transceiver I/O-based FPGA designs to build PCIe and Gigabit Ethernet based systems. As the kit is PCI Express form factor compliant, it allows for design, evaluation and development using a standard laptop with an ExpressCard slot or a desktop with a PCIe slot. Designers can also explore the high performance memory system (HPMS) capabilities of IGLOO2 FPGAs.

"This low-cost platform enables evaluation and prototyping of our newest FPGA family and offers full access to common electrical interfaces including PCIe, which are requirements for many mainstream applications," said Paul Ekas, vice president of Marketing for SoC products at Microsemi. "The kit also includes methods to perform power measurements on our industry-leading low power IGLOO2 FPGA. This is an important feature when designing products where low power is a critical factor."

The IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit features the 12K logic element M2GL010T-1FGG484 device and includes an RJ45 interface to 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Full-Duplex SERDES SMAs,  512MB of LPDDR, 64MB SPI Flash, USB-UART connections as well as I2C, SPI and GPIO headers. The kit includes a 12 volt (V) power supply but can also be powered via the PCIe edge connector and a FlashPro4 JTAG programmer for programming and debugging. The kit allows for development and testing of PCIe Gen2 x1 lane designs, as well as testing of the FPGA transceiver's signal quality using full-duplex SERDES SMA pairs. Test points are conveniently pulled out to allow easy power measurements using a standard digital multi-meter.

Worldwide IGLOO2 Seminar Series
Microsemi, in conjunction with its worldwide distribution partners, will be hosting a series of seminars globally. These seminars will include hands-on training with the IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit and Libero System-on-Chip (SoC) software. Dates for these events will be published on the events calendar at www.microsemi.com.

About IGLOO2 FPGAs
Microsemi's IGLOO2 FPGAs continue the company's focus on addressing the needs of today's cost-optimized FPGA market by providing a LUT-based fabric, 5G transceiver, high speed GPIO, block RAM, high-performance memory subsystem, and DSP blocks in a differentiated, cost and power optimized architecture. This next generation IGLOO2 architecture offers up to five times more logic density and three times more fabric performance than its predecessors and combines a non-volatile Flash-based fabric with the highest number of general purpose I/O, 5G SERDES interfaces and PCIe end points when compared to other products in its class. IGLOO2 FPGAs offer best-in-class feature integration coupled with the lowest power, highest reliability and most advanced security in the industry.

Pricing and Availability
The IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit, M2GL-EVAL-KIT, is available for ordering now at an introductory price of $99 for the first 1,000 orders. The kit includes Microsemi's Libero SoC Gold Software License. The toolset is a comprehensive software toolset for designing with Microsemi FPGAs and SoC FPGAs. Libero SoC supports the IGLOO2 FPGA family by managing the entire design flow from design entry, synthesis and simulation, through place-and-route, timing and power analysis. It also enables FPGA development and utilization of the reference designs made available with the kit.

About Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC) offers a comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor and system solutions for communications, defense & security, aerospace and industrial markets. Products include high-performance and radiation-hardened analog mixed-signal integrated circuits, FPGAs, SoCs and ASICs; power management products; timing and voice processing devices; RF solutions; discrete components; security technologies and scalable anti-tamper products; Power-over-Ethernet ICs and midspans; as well as custom design capabilities and services. Microsemi is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif., and has approximately 3,000 employees globally. Learn more at www.microsemi.com.

Microsemi and the Microsemi logo are registered trademarks or service marks of Microsemi Corporation and/or its affiliates. Third-party trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Any statements set forth in this news release that are not entirely historical and factual in nature, including without limitation statements related to its low-cost IGLOO2 FPGA Evaluation Kit, and its potential effects on future business, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, such factors as rapidly changing technology and product obsolescence, potential cost increases, variations in customer order preferences, weakness or competitive pricing environment of the marketplace, uncertain demand for and acceptance of the company's products, adverse circumstances in any of our end markets, results of in-process or planned development or marketing and promotional campaigns, difficulties foreseeing future demand, potential non-realization of expected orders or non-realization of backlog, product returns, product liability, and other potential unexpected business and economic conditions or adverse changes in current or expected industry conditions, difficulties and costs of protecting patents and other proprietary rights, inventory obsolescence and difficulties regarding customer qualification of products. In addition to these factors and any other factors mentioned elsewhere in this news release, the reader should refer as well to the factors, uncertainties or risks identified in the company's most recent Form 10-K and all subsequent Form 10-Q reports filed by Microsemi with the SEC. Additional risk factors may be identified from time to time in Microsemi's future filings. The forward-looking statements included in this release speak only as of the date hereof, and Microsemi does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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SOURCE Microsemi Corporation