Actel Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTL), the leader in low power FPGAs and UMC (NYSE:UMC)(TSE:2303), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that the two companies have cooperated for the production of Actel's next generation flash-based FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array). The chips will be manufactured on UMC's 65nm low leakage process, and will take advantage of the foundry's 65nm embedded flash (eFlash) technology. Successful first-silicon demonstration of Actel's 65nm eFlash-based FPGA has already been achieved at UMC's 300mm fabs.
“Actel's unique flash based technology has been the company's key differentiating factor, and the reason why we have been growing rapidly in the consumer, automotive and industrial markets,” said Esmat Hamdy, senior vice president, technology and operations for Actel. “Our innovations are squarely focused on the real needs of today's designers: lowering power, size and cost. Partnering with UMC for our next generation flash based FPGAs allows us to provide even greater benefits to our customers.”
UMC's 65nm CMOS technology is in volume production at the company's two 300mm fabs, with yield-proven customer products from all major sectors of the semiconductor industry. UMC's 65nm embedded flash technology is ready for customer design-in, with key modules ready and working silicon already achieved.
Joe Ko, vice president of Specialty Technology Development at UMC, commented, “We are excited that Actel is taking advantage of UMC's 65nm low leakage CMOS and embedded flash technologies to further the competitiveness of their upcoming products. Compared to earlier products in mass production on the 0.13um process node, UMC's 65nm eFlash technology will allow Actel's FPGAs to realize a 50% smaller cell size and a 3X speed gain to enable higher overall performance.”