Microsemi Announces LiteFast Serial Communication Protocol to Reduce Customers' Design-In Efforts and Time to Market

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Aug. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced the availability of its new LiteFast solution, a proprietary lightweight, high-speed, low latency, point-to-point serial communication protocol. Embedded systems across a wide variety of applications use high-speed serial interface and protocols to transfer data at speeds higher than 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). LiteFast enables customers to reduce design-in efforts and time to market with its easy implementation of high-speed serial links leveraging Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) transceiver blocks within SmartFusion™2 system-on-chip (SoC) field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), IGLOO™2 FPGAs and RTG4™ high-speed signal processing radiation-tolerant FPGAs without the need for heavy logic utilization, greatly reducing cost and power.

"LiteFast allows customers to easily integrate additional features into Microsemi's award-winning FPGAs  by providing pre-synthesized intellectual property (IP) cores, an IP reference design and graphical user interface (GUI)-based demonstrations enabling them to implement a lightweight serial communication protocol into their applications," said Chowdhary Musunuri, senior director of design services and solutions, at Microsemi. "Customers who do not want the overhead of existing standards such as Serial RapidIO, serial Ethernet or PCIe can now use Microsemi's LiteFast, making this the ideal pre-validated option for those needing a viable low cost, high-speed, low latency point-to-point solution."

Microsemi's new IP solution is designed for applications requiring high-speed serial communication links in back/control planes, chip-to-chip and board-to-board applications, high-performance bridging solutions, network interface cards, enterprise switches, data centers and medical applications. In addition, space customers can benefit from LiteFast's easy implementation of multiple high-speed serial links in applications involving wired connectivity, helping to improve the system-level bandwidths.

According to Chaitanya Kumar, principal analyst and CEO at IndustryARC, medical and industrial systems globally are increasingly adopting backplane circuit boards and line cards to make systems modular and scalable, and are using high-speed serial interface to easily transfer data. According to the market research firm's study from 2015 on critical care medical products, the global market for medical equipment in imaging, surgical and patient monitoring is growing at the rate of 5.7 percent over the forecast period from 2015-2020.

In addition to medical applications, LiteFast is ideal for target markets including networking, data center, industrial and aerospace, and supports Microsemi's goal to strengthen its high-speed serial interface SerDes solutions portfolio. The solution comes with pre-synthesized and validated IP cores (transmitter and receiver), a demonstration design and complete documentation which reduces the design and validation time. Designs can be easily reused across multiple platforms using Libero SoC Design Suite, a comprehensive, easy to learn, easy to adopt development toolset for designing with Microsemi's power efficient FPGAs and SoC FPGAs. In addition, LiteFast is validated with a hardware platform using the company's SmartFusion2 Security Evaluation Kit, which has a 90K logic elements (LEs) SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA device.

Key Features

• Supports x 1, x 2 and x 4 lanes per SerDes
• Very little utilization of FPGA logic resources (lightweight)
• Low latency
• Idle frame for link establishment and data frame for data transfer
• Idle frame when no data is transmitted
• Built in flow control, word alignment, block alignment, lane alignment and hot-plug support
• Serial full-duplex or simplex operation
• Flow control through token exchange

Product Availability
Microsemi's LiteFast solution is available now. For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/technology-solutions/serdes-pci-express#litefast or contact [email protected].

About Microsemi's IGLOO2 FPGAs and SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs
Microsemi's IGLOO2 FPGAs and SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs deliver more resources in low density devices, with the lowest power, proven security and exceptional reliability. The devices offer 30-50 percent more power efficiency and are ideal for general purpose functions such as Gigabit Ethernet or dual PCI Express control planes, bridging functions, input/output (I/O) expansion and conversion, video/image processing, system management and secure connectivity. Microsemi FPGAs and SoC FPGAs are used by customers in in communications, industrial, medical, defense and aviation markets. PCIe Gen 2 connectivity starts at just 10K logic elements (LEs). SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs offer a 166MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processor with up to 512KB of embedded flash and a complete peripheral set. IGLOO2 FPGAs offer a high-performance memory subsystem with up to 512KB embedded flash, 2 x 32 KB embedded static random-access memory (SRAM), two direct memory access (DMA) engines and two double date rate (DDR) controllers. Microsemi also offers a broad range of military, automotive and space grade FPGAs and SoC FPGAs. For more information visit: http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/soc-fpga/smartfusion2 and http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/fpga/igloo2-fpga.

About Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC) offers a comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. Products include high-performance and radiation-hardened analog mixed-signal integrated circuits, FPGAs, SoCs and ASICs; power management products; timing and synchronization devices and precise time solutions, setting the world's standard for time; voice processing devices; RF solutions; discrete components; enterprise storage and communication solutions, security technologies and scalable anti-tamper products; Ethernet solutions; Power-over-Ethernet ICs and midspans; as well as custom design capabilities and services. Microsemi is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, and has approximately 4,800 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 the availability of its new LiteFast solution, a small-sized, high-speed, low latency, point-to-point serial communication protocol, 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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