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1 – ProASIC3 Device Family Overview
General Description
ProASIC3, the third-generation family of Actel flash FPGAs, offers performance, density, and
features beyond those of the ProASIC
PLUS®
family. Nonvolatile flash technology gives ProASIC3
devices the advantage of being a secure, low-power, single-chip solution that is live at power-up
(LAPU). ProASIC3 is reprogrammable and offers time-to-market benefits at an ASIC-level unit cost.
These features enable designers to create high-density systems using existing ASIC or FPGA design
flows and tools.
ProASIC3 devices offer 1 kbit of on-chip, reprogrammable, nonvolatile FlashROM storage as well as
clock conditioning circuitry based on an integrated phase-locked loop (PLL). The A3P015 and
A3P030 devices have no PLL or RAM support. ProASIC3 devices have up to 1 million system gates,
supported with up to 144 kbits of true dual-port SRAM and up to 300 user I/Os.
ProASIC3 devices support the ARM7 soft IP core and Cortex-M1 devices. The ARM-enabled devices
have Actel ordering numbers that begin with M7A3P (CoreMP7) and M1A3P (Cortex-M1) and do
not support AES decryption.
Flash Advantages
Reduced Cost of Ownership
Advantages to the designer extend beyond low unit cost, performance, and ease of use. Unlike
SRAM-based FPGAs, flash-based ProASIC3 devices allow all functionality to be live at power-up; no
external boot PROM is required. On-board security mechanisms prevent access to all the
programming information and enable secure remote updates of the FPGA logic. Designers can
perform secure remote in-system reprogramming to support future design iterations and field
upgrades with confidence that valuable intellectual property (IP) cannot be compromised or
copied. Secure ISP can be performed using the industry-standard AES algorithm. The ProASIC3
family device architecture mitigates the need for ASIC migration at higher user volumes. This
makes the ProASIC3 family a cost-effective ASIC replacement solution, especially for applications in
the consumer, networking/ communications, computing, and avionics markets.
Security
The nonvolatile, flash-based ProASIC3 devices do not require a boot PROM, so there is no
vulnerable external bitstream that can be easily copied. ProASIC3 devices incorporate FlashLock,
which provides a unique combination of reprogrammability and design security without external
overhead, advantages that only an FPGA with nonvolatile flash programming can offer.
ProASIC3 devices utilize a 128-bit flash-based lock and a separate AES key to secure programmed
intellectual property and configuration data. In addition, all FlashROM data in ProASIC3 devices
can be encrypted prior to loading, using the industry-leading AES-128 (FIPS192) bit block cipher
encryption standard. The AES standard was adopted by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) in 2000 and replaces the 1977 DES standard. ProASIC3 devices have a built-in AES
decryption engine and a flash-based AES key that make them the most comprehensive
programmable logic device security solution available today. ProASIC3 devices with AES-based
security allow for secure, remote field updates over public networks such as the Internet, and
ensure that valuable IP remains out of the hands of system overbuilders, system cloners, and IP
thieves. The contents of a programmed ProASIC3 device cannot be read back, although secure
design verification is possible.
ARM-enabled ProASIC3 devices do not support user-controlled AES security mechanisms. Since the
ARM core must be protected at all times, AES encryption is always on for the core logic, so
bitstreams are always encrypted. There is no user access to encryption for the FlashROM
programming data.
