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Seiko Epson Selects Actel ProASIC3 FPGAs for New Photo Viewers

Tuesday 09. December 2008 - Multimedia Storage Viewers Leverage Inherent Low Power of Actel's Flash-based Devices

Highlighting the success of its low-power, flash-based devices, Actel Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTL) today announced that Seiko Epson Corporation has selected Actel’s ProASIC(R)3 FPGAs for use in its new Epson Multimedia Storage Viewer P-7000 and P-6000. Chosen for its low-power, reduced space, and high-performance advantages, the 125,000-system gate A3P125 ProASIC3 device is being deployed for high-speed access interface circuit to a CompactFlash card.

Epson’s new multimedia storage viewers feature as much as 160GB (P-7000) hard drive capacity and data transfer speeds as fast as 1GB per 100 seconds when using a high-speed CompactFlash memory card. In addition, the “Photo Fine Premia” LCD supports 94 percent of the Adobe(R) RGB color space with wide viewing angle.

“In addition to storing images to the built-in HDD on-location immediately after shooting, users can organize the images and create custom print by using retouch functions without a PC,” said Noriaki Sakurada, Seiko Epson senior engineer of IJP Planning & Design Department. “With Actel’s flash-based ProASIC3 FPGAs, we were able to achieve the high-speed and high-quality required for transferring data while significantly reducing CF card power consumption.”

“Many consumer handheld devices, such as the new Epson photo viewers, require fast time-to-market and low-power consumption and extended battery life,” said Masa Katayama, area sales director, Actel Japan. “We’re gratified that companies like Epson have determined that our flash-based ProASIC3 FPGAs could meet the low power features and price points necessary for the consumer marketplace.”

The reprogrammable, flash-based ProASIC3 family, with densities ranging from 10K to 3M system gates, offers up to 350MHz performance and supports up to 620 I/Os.