FPGAs

The newest member of the ECP5 family, Lattice Semiconductor has announced that the LFE5UM-85 delivers the highest performance in the family in the same packages as smaller devices. This enables engineers to design prototypes with the best performance for convenience and flexibility, then optimise for cost in a lower density device when they go to production.

Enabling mobile consumer device manufacturers to quickly implement differentiating features, Lattice Semiconductor has introduced the iCE40 Ultra FPGA family. The company claims that it delivers unsurpassed integration of emerging infrared remote, barcode, touch, user identification and pedometer functions with sufficient customisation capabilities.

How FPGA technology is being used in industrial applications to provide performance with flexibility, and to lower system costs. By Stefano Zammattio, Altera.

Enabling designers to quickly and easily accelerate evaluation or prototype their application, Microsemi has announced the SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA Evaluation Kit. This easy-to-use, feature-rich and affordable platform enables OEMs to build highly differentiated products that help them gain a significant time to market advantage.

Spectrum has created new firmware packages that allow its high-speed M4i series digitiser cards to perform on-board signal averaging by using the latest FPGA technology. The M4i.44xx series cards offer real-time sampling rates of up to 500 MS/s with 14 bit resolution and 250 MS/s with 16 bit resolution.

Altera announced that its FPGAs are central to software defined data centre (SSDC) development, and that Altera is working with Microsoft Research and Bing to accelerate portions of the web search engine. Altera's field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can accelerate the processing of large amounts of data on servers, which helps address big data challenges and massive distributed workloads.

Rochester Electronics has been licensed by National Semiconductor (acquired by Texas Instruments) to continue the manufacturing of the DM7440N since its EOL notification almost ten years ago. The DM7440N is a dual 4-input NAND gate in a 14-pin plastic DIP that operates over a full temperature range.

A FMC module, integrated with HDL code and software drivers for rapid design prototyping and interoperability with Xilinx FPGAs, has been launched by Analog Devices. Available immediately, the AD-FMCADC2-EBZ board provides superior wideband dynamic performance and integrated functionality and enables development and prototyping of advanced RF sampling architectures.

Enabling designers to start their MAX 10 FPGA designs immediately, Altera have announced the availability of Quartus II beta software and early access documentation for MAX 10 FPGAs. Based on TSMC’s 55nm embedded flash process technology, MAX 10 FPGAs revolutionize non-volatile FPGA integration by delivering advanced processing capabilities into a small form factor, low-cost, instant-on programmable logic device. 

Altera’s 20nm Arria 10 FPGAs and SoCs are now available in TSMC’s patented, fine-pitch copper bump-based packaging technology. Altera is the first company to adopt this technology in commercial production. “TSMC has provided a very advanced and robust integrated package solution for our Arria 10 devices, the highest-density monolithic 20 nm FPGA die in the industry,” said Bill Mazotti, vice president of worldwide operation...