HILLSBORO, OR – December 10, 2019 – Lattice semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: LSCC), a leading provider of low-power programmable devices, today announced the launch of the first Lattice-based A product of the Nexus FPGA technology platform – CrossLink-NX. This new FPGA provides developers with the low power, small size, reliability and high performance features they need to build innovative embedded vision and AI solutions for communications, computing, industrial, automotive and consumer electronics systems.
Patrick Moorhead, President and Founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, said: “Technological trends such as 5G connectivity, cloud analytics, factory automation and smart homes are driving demand for machine learning-enabled embedded vision solutions. However, due to cloud-based machine learning Will bring data latency, cost and privacy issues, developers need to move more data processing work from the cloud to the network edge. However, this requires OEMs to use high performance data processing, low power operation and small size AI/ML inference solutions at the network edge.”
Because of their parallel processing capabilities, FPGAs are excellent hardware platforms for embedded vision and AI applications. This parallel architecture greatly speeds up certain processing tasks such as data inference.
Bill Pu, co-founder and president of Leopard Imaging, said: “Embedded vision systems are becoming more and more complex. Many systems today use multiple image sensors, displays and cameras. Due to the stringent size and functionality of devices at the edge of the network, The design of such systems becomes more complex due to power consumption constraints. Lattice CrossLink-NX FPGAs have extremely low power consumption, small size, high-performance interfaces, and powerful software and IP libraries, all in a single device. Quickly and easily develop a wide range of video signal bridging, aggregation and splitting applications for industrial and automotive customers, saving significant development time and resources.”
The CrossLink-NX series of FPGAs are designed using the new Lattice Nexus technology platform, which combines the 28 nm FD-SOI manufacturing process with Lattice’s new FPGA architecture, optimized for small size, low power applications.
Gordon Hands, director of product marketing at Lattice Semiconductor, said: “Compared to comparable FPGAs, CrossLink-NX not only leads in power, size, reliability and performance, but is also supported by robust design software, IP and application reference designs. , which allows developers to easily and quickly integrate CrossLink-NX FPGAs into new or existing network edge designs.”
Key features of CrossLink-NX include:
Low power consumption – CrossLink-NX is based on the Lattice Nexus FPGA technology platform, which reduces power consumption by 75% compared to similar FPGAs
High reliability—The Soft Error Rate (SER) of CrossLink-NX is more than 100 times lower than comparable FPGAs, making it an excellent solution option for critical applications that require absolute reliability in runtime.First CrossLink-NX device optimized for operating environments in outdoor, industrial and automotive applications
Performance – The following three features of CrossLink-NX make it a big boost in performance
High-speed I/O support – CrossLink-NX FPGAs support a wide variety of high-speed I/O (including MIPI, PCIe, and DDR3 memory), making them ideal for embedded vision applications
Instantaneous Start – Some applications do not allow the system to start for too long, such as industrial motor control.To meet these application requirements, CrossLink-NX can achieve ultra-fast I/O configuration in 3 milliseconds and complete device configuration in less than 15 milliseconds
High memory-to-logic ratio – In order to efficiently support AI inference on network edge devices, CrossLink-NX has an average of 170 bits of storage space per logic unit, the highest memory-to-logic ratio among similar products, and the performance of previous generation products. 2 times
Small form factor—The first CrossLink-NX device measures only 6 x 6 mm, up to ten times smaller than comparable FPGAs, better enabling customers to reduce system size
Software Tools and IP – In addition to the new Lattice Radiant 2.0 design software, Lattice offers a library of IP cores including interfaces such as MIPI D-PHY, PCIe, SGMII, and OpenLDI, as well as demos of popular embedded vision applications , e.g. 4:1 image sensor aggregation
CrossLink-NX was originally planned to be available in 2020, and Lattice is releasing the product ahead of schedule and has already provided device samples to select customers.
