MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 17 Dec. 2007. Actel Corp. in Mountain View, Calif., is introducing the Icicle Kit, which uses the company's 5-microwatt Igloo field programmable gate array (FPGA) with low-power, flexible implementation, and low power consumption for portable applications.

The kit enables designers to program, evaluate, and modify their low-power Igloo-based portable designs. Powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the 1.4-by-3.6-inch Icicle evaluation board is the size of a small cell phone.

The Icicle board is a RoHS-compliant solution that integrates a nonvolatile, 125,000-gate AGL125 Igloo FPGA. The board includes the built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, USB-to-UART interfaces, and power management circuits.

In addition to the Icicle evaluation board, the kit includes a programming stick. Also offered is a free, unlimited-use license for the Actel Libero Integrated Design Environment (IDE) Gold edition, which enables designers using the Icicle Kit to take advantage of the advanced power analysis tools recently introduced with Actel's Libero IDE v8.1 to identify key sources of power in their designs.

Other kit elements include user's guide and tutorial, printed circuit board (PCB) schematics, layout and sample design. For more information contact Actel online at www.actel.com.