Microsemi Reaches Key Production-Qualification Milestone for its Award-Winning PolarFire FPGA Family

PolarFire FPGAs have now been adopted by dozens of customers in key communications, defense and industrial infrastructure market segments, and early access customers are moving into early production qualification with the family. These systems have a substantially lower cost of ownership, as the PolarFire family enables significantly lower power consumption and an ability to operate in harsher thermal environments. 

"With the first award-winning PolarFire device production-qualified, current customers can now release their end products into the market and new customers can start their PolarFire designs with the assurance they are utilizing an FPGA family that has gone through a robust qualification regimen, completing thousands of man hours of testing and validation," said Suresh Menon, vice president of engineering at Microsemi. "All other PolarFire family members will now be rolled out in the forthcoming months and can be designed in today using Microsemi's comprehensive, easy to learn, easy to adopt Libero SoC Design Suite, giving designers a true alternative for mid-range FPGAs."

Apart from the comprehensive Libero Design Suite and SmartDebug debugging tool suite, Microsemi also offers complete solutions for 1G Ethernet, 10G Ethernet, JESD204B, double data rate (DDR4) memory interfaces, AXI4 interconnect intellectual property (IP) and many others found in the company's IP Catalog targeting PolarFire FPGAs and the PolarFire Evaluation Kit.

According to market research firm Industry ARC, the overall FPGA market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 6 percent from 2017 to 2023, expanding from $4.79 billion to $6.68 billion during the forecast period, driven by replacement of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and other programmable logic devices (PLDs) with FPGAs. Microsemi's 300K LE MPF300T PolarFire FPGA is ideal for applications across multiple markets leveraging FPGA technology, including JESD204B interfaces, 10 gigabit (Gb) Ethernet solutions, imaging/video, machine learning, PCI Express-based designs, control processing, encryption and root of trust, secure wireless communications, aircraft networking, and actuation and control.

Microsemi's PolarFire FPGA enables customers to forego purchasing higher end FPGAs to obtain the Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) performance needed for their designs while offering lower power, mid-range capabilities that offer significant advantages over competing devices in several application areas. The PolarFire family provides a variety of solutions for mid-range and low-density FPGAs as well as complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs).

PolarFire FPGAs also feature a cost-optimized architecture delivering additional benefits, including:

• Standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) 28 nanometer (nm) process technology
• Transceiver performance optimized for 12.7 Gbps, yielding smaller size and lower power
• The only low cost, mid-range device offering 1.6 Gbps LVDS and 1.6Gbps DDR4 I/O
• High performance security IP, uniquely offering hardened security IP in a mid-range device
• Mid-range FPGAs in the smallest packages

The device also offers power optimization with features including:

• 28nm flash, yielding very low static power
• Negligible inrush power
• Low power modes, including Flash*Freeze, which yields best-in-class standby power
• Integrated hard IP, offering DDR PHY, PCIe end point/root port and a crypto processor
• Total power (static and dynamic) of up to 50 percent lower power

Availability
Microsemi's production-qualified PolarFire FPGAs are available for general ordering now, with all other PolarFire FPGA engineering samples available for design-in. For more information, visit https://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/fpga/polarfire-fpga or email [email protected].

About PolarFire FPGAs
Microsemi's new cost-optimized PolarFire FPGAs deliver the industry's lowest power at mid-range densities with exceptional security and reliability. The award-winning product family features 12.7 Gbps SerDes transceivers at up to 50 percent lower power than competing FPGAs. Densities span from 100K to 500K logic elements (LEs) and are ideal for a wide range of applications within wireline access networks and mobile infrastructure, defense and commercial aviation markets, as well as industry 4.0 which includes the industrial automation and internet of things (IoT) markets.

PolarFire FPGAs' transceivers can support multiple serial protocols, making the products ideal for communications applications with 10Gbps Ethernet, CPRI, JESD204B, Interlaken and PCIe. In addition, the ability to implement serial gigabit Ethernet (SGMII) on general purpose input/output (GPIO) enables numerous 1Gbps Ethernet links to be supported. PolarFire FPGAs also contain the most hardened security IP to protect customer designs, data and supply chain. The non-volatile PolarFire product family consumes 10 times less static power than competitive devices and features an even lower standby power referred to as Flash*Freeze. For more information, visit www.microsemi.com/polarfire.

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 statements related to its first cost-optimized, low power, mid-range PolarFire FPGA device—MPF300XT—now production-qualified, 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.

SOURCE Microsemi Corporation

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