Low-Power FD-SOI FPGA Melds AI and Bridging

Find the Latest SoC Solutions
for... Automotive... IoT... Security... Audio... Video

Need to go beyond just bridging between devices? Lattice Semiconductor's CrossLink-NX could very well be the solution.

electronicdesign.com, Jan. 08, 2020 – 

Lattice Semiconductor is well-known for its low-power, flash-based FPGAs. One of the applications the company has targeted is interfacing between devices. The CrossLink-NX FPGA is designed to provide such bridging support with built-in, hard IP serial interfaces supporting devices like digital cameras. The FPGA fabric can be used to handle protocol conversions, but it's also capable of implementing more complex machine -earning (ML) models to process data.

This type of implementation can be very useful in automotive applications where radar, LiDAR, or vision sensor data streams can be processed by the FPGA instead of having it done on the host. Of course, hosts with ML support are being used as well, but the low-power nature of the CrossLink-NX enables designers to build more power-efficient systems.

CrossLink-NX and Lattice's FPGAs in general have a soft error rate (SER) that's up to 100X lower than similar FPGAs in its class due to two factors: they are flash-based, and the implementation of Lattice's transistor technology. This is important for safety and high-reliability applications. The initial set of CrossLink-NX devices targets ruggedized environments found in outdoor, industrial, and automotive applications.

click here to read more...

 Back