High speed serial data interfaces are significant design parameters for embedded systems and Altera has set about simplifying the design process for protocols such as PCI Express with its latest Stratix-II FPGAs.

“Along with cost, performance and power, high speed serial I/O support is one of the top design requirements users are asking for,” said Pat Mead, marketing manager at Altera Europe.

High speed protocols in particular PCI Express and Serial Rapid IO, said Mead, are of growing significance for a range of embedded system designs and not just PC-based systems.

The firm’s Stratix-II GX FPGA family embeds up to 20 full-duplex serial I/O transceivers which can operate up to 6.375Gbit/s.

This doubles the peak data rate on previous devices, but the emphasis of the GX family is on simplifying PCI Express and Serial Rapid I/O system design. To the usual protocol IP blocks have been added complete reference designs and development boards for specific protocols such as PCI Express and serial digital interface (SDI).

Other protocols supported include Serial Rapid I/O, Gigabit Ethernet, XAUI and SONET.

According to Mead, another issue with high speed I/O designs is signal integrity. “To address this there is programmable transmit pre-emphasis and receive signal equalisation on-chip,” said Mead.

The firm has kept the transceiver power consumption to 225mW per channel. Part of this power saving comes from a novel phase-locked loop design where separate high and low speed circuits provide clock signals to groups of four transceivers.

Meanwhile, Altera has announced third quarter revenue of $292m, a rise of ten per cent from the same period last year.

Third quarter net income was $78m, $0.21 per diluted share, compared to net income of $83m, $0.22 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2004.

"Every new product family grew sequentially this quarter, including FPGAs, CPLDs, and HardCopy structured Asics, creating another quarter of strong new product growth," said John Daane, president, chief executive officer, and chairman.

"The Stratix and Stratix GX families collectively grew 40 per cent sequentially and now represent more than 20 per cent of Altera's revenues," he added.

www.altera.com