Lattice Semiconductor is the only FPGA supplier with competitive technology roadmap for the mid to low end market, according to marketing v-p Douglas Hunter.
Hunter told Electronics Weekly, that Lattice’s proposed $62m acquisition of SiliconBlue is a confirmation of the company’s plans to grow its core low end, low cost FPGA market.
“We’ve put money where our mouth is for our plan to grow the mid to low end FPGA market,” Hunter told EW.
SiliconBlue will give Lattice a scaleable non-volatile one-time-programmable technology, established low power products and a deeper knowledge of the lower cost consumer FPGA market.
“We realised our embedded flash technology may not scale well beyond 65nm and SiliconBlue gives us non-volatile one-time-programmable memory technology that scales to 40nm and I believe it will scale to 20nm,” said Hunter.
The company’s ice40 FPGAs are 40nm devices which use the non-volatile one-time-programmable technology to achieve their low power spec.
The other attraction to Lattice is the way SiliconBlue is addressing mobile handset designs with its low power SRAM mobileFPGA devices, based on its patented non-volatile configuration memory.
Initially Lattice will see the benefit of this non-volatile technology in SiliconBlue’s own low end FPGA product lines, like ice40 and ice65.
“SiliconBlue products fit well under our MachXO2 low-end FPGAs,” said Hunter.
“Its technology is aimed at the sub-50k look-up table FPGA market, where designers value non-volatile one-time-programmability,” said Hunter.
Hunter expects the SiliconBlue products to build on Lattice’s existing activity in the low end mobile market.
“We are already getting traction in low end mobile market with our XO2 line but some customers don’t even need all the features of theses devices, SiliconBlue’s one-time-programmable products come in much lower,” said Hunter.
“SiliconBlue also has a deeper experience of the mobile market, which is important,” said Hunter.
In Europe, Hunter said that Lattice will increase the market presence of SiliconBlue’s product lines.
“We will put more boots to the ground to bring them to market,” said Hunter.