PROGRAMMABLE SOLUTIONS ZONE, SPONSORED BY ALTERA

  • Fastest 14bit CMOS DAC

    Fujitsu has announced its third generation 14bit CMOS DACs, claiming it to be the world's fastest at 12Gsample/s. Dubbed MB86066, the part is aimed at...

    Posted: 08 Feb 2012 | FULL ARTICLE

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50 years in electronics: Hall of Fame

Editor Richard Wilson’s Hall of Fame is a personal selection of the most influential companies of the last 50 years.

Programmable logic firms

Altera developed its first programmable array logic (PAL) device in 1984. These evolved into first complex PLDs and then Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are logic arrays that can be reprogrammed by the engineer during the design phase and even during operation in the “field”. Altera’s FPGAs are the Cyclone, Arria GX and Stratix series and the MAX series of CPLDs.

Xilinx was founded in 1984 by two Zilog engineers, Bernard Vonderschmitt and Ross Freeman, who wanted to develop his idea of a programmable device. Xilinx sold its first chip in 1985. After four years of venture funding the fabless chip company went public in 1989. Today its FPGAs include Spartan, Virtex and the latest Xilinx 7 series. As well as the CoolRunner-II CPLDs.

Unlike the traditional, SRAM-based programmable technology used by Altera and Xilinx, in 1985 Actel created its first FPGA using antifuse-based technology. It later acquired the technology to create the first flash-based FPGAs. Its FPGAs include the Igloo and ProAsic familes, as well as the SmartFusion mixed-signal programmable devices.

Lattice Semiconductor was founded in 1983, by C. Norman Winningstad, Rahul Sud, and Ray Capece. It developed its own programmable technology for CPLDs and FPGAs. Its FPGAs include the LatticeECP3 series and the LatticeXP2 series, which combines a look-up table based FPGA fabric with flash non-volatile cells. Its CPLDs are the MachXO series and the ispMACH 4000ZE series.

Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI) was founded in 1969 by a former Fairchild Semiconductor engineer. It was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in 1987. It was soon spun off by the microprocessor firm as Vantis, which was later bought by Lattice Semiconductor.

 

FPGA Zone, sponsored by Altera

Sponsored content from Altera

Arria V FPGA Sneak Peek: Transceiver Operation at 6.375 Gbps and 10.3125 Gbps

 

Altera Continues Rollout of 28-nm Product Portfolio with Shipment of Arria V FPGAs

Company demonstrates lowest power midrange FPGAs with 10.3125-Gbps transceivers optimized for wireless, broadcast, and military applications

San Jose, Calif., November 29, 2011–Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR) today announced it has started shipping its 28-nm Arria® V FPGAs. The Arria V devices are the lowest power mid-range FPGAs available on the market today with 10.3125-Gbps transceiver technology. The family’s innovative features allow designers to tailor their low power, high bandwidth, and low cost requirements for next-generation systems in wireless, broadcast, and military markets. The Arria V devices are the second family to ship from the company’s 28-nm product portfolio following the shipment of its Stratix® V family in early 2011, underscoring Altera’s commitment to deliver 28-nm devices optimized to meet the diverse design needs of customers.

Read More >>

Sponsored content from Altera

Altera Technical Papers

Achieving Lowest System Cost with Midrange 28-nm FPGAs 

Whitepaper - Achieving Lowest System Cost with Midrange 28-nm FPGAs
As electronic products increase in complexity and capability, the cost to develop and support them also increases from a design and debug perspective, a manufacturing perspective, and an operation and maintenance perspective.
Read Achieving Lowest System Cost with Midrange 28-nm FPGAs >>

FPGA Whitepaper - Meeting the Low Power Imperative at 28 nm 

Whitepaper - Meeting the Low Power Imperative at 28 nm
This document describes how Altera’s 28-nm devices enable product developers to control power consumption in today’s increasingly power sensitive applications.
Read - Meeting the Low Power Imperative at 28 nm >>

FPGA Whitepaper - Using External Memory Interfaces to Achieve Efficient High-Speed Memory Solutions 

Whitepaper - Using External Memory Interfaces to Achieve Efficient High-Speed Memory Solutions
This white paper describes some of the components involved in an external memory interface. Altera’s portfolio of 28-nm FPGAs was developed to provide both the highest overall bandwidth of 921 Gbps and a highly efficient solution that allows a designer to get the most effective bandwidth possible.
Read Using External Memory Interfaces to Achieve Efficient High-Speed Memory Solutions >>

FPGA Zone - Elektra Winner

Sponsored content from Altera

Introducing SoC FPGAs for Embedded Systems

Altera SoC FPGAs integrate a dual-core ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ processor, memory controllers, and a rich set of peripherals with Cyclone® V and Arria® V-class FPGAs tightly coupled via a high-bandwidth interconnect backbone. This user-customizable ARM-based system-on-a-chip combines the performance and power savings of hard IP, with the flexibility of programmable logic, and robust software ecosystem of the ARM architecture.

Five Reasons to Design with an SoC FPGA

  • Reduce Board Size – Integrating the FPGA, microprocessor, and DSP functions in a single chip lets you reduce the number of devices on your board, minimizing board size and complexity.
  • Lower Power Consumption – Take advantage of SoC FPGAs that leverage the Altera-optimized low-power 28-nm (28LP) process technology, a rich set of hard IP, and integrated low-power serial transceivers.
  • Reduce Total System Cost – Reduce your bill of materials costs with fewer discrete devices, power supply rails, and oscillators required.
  • Design with FPGA Flexibility – Choose from a broad range of soft IP cores from Altera and third-party IP partners to quickly create a custom ARM processor system. Adapt to changing industry standards and market requirements with the flexible FPGA fabric. Quickly create custom hardware designs with the Quartus® II design software and Qsys system integration tool.
  • Common Development Tools – Leverage the extensive ARM ecosystem of software development tools, operating systems, and middleware.

 

Extending the 28-nm FPGA Portfolio
Altera offers a full 28-nm device portfolio that is tailored to your design requirements. Our SoC FPGAs join this diverse family of Cyclone V SoC FPGAs and Arria V SoC FPGAs. You'll find dozens of devices that optimize requirements in areas such as performance, I/O resources, package size, power, and cost.
Read More >>

 

Altera interviews

ASSPs, ASICs will open doors for FPGAs - Altera v-p
FPGA Zone - ASSPs and ASICs will open doors for FPGAs, says Altera v-p Mark Nelson, v-p of European sales for Altera tells Electronics Weekly his views on how low power, embedded intellectual property and advancing process technology are shaping the FPGA market.

 

Altera closing on Xilinx; ups R&D 30%
FPGA Zone - Altera closing on Xilinx; ups R&D 30% Altera is moving in on its long time rival Xilinx and expects to be only 3 points of market share behind by the end of this year, according to Altera's President, CEO, and Chairman John Daane.

Biography: John P. Daane
President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Mr. Daane has served as Altera’s president and chief executive officer since November 2000 and was named chairman of the board in May 2003. He has served as one of our directors since December 2000. Prior to joining us, Mr. Daane spent 15 years at LSI Logic Corporation, a semiconductor manufacturer, most recently as executive vice president, communications products group. In this role, he was responsible for ASIC technology development and the computer, consumer, and communications divisions.

 

Sponsored content from Altera

Altera puts HD video analytics on a single chip

FPGA Zone - HD video analytics ICAltera launches a single chip HD video analytics IC. The device enables a computer to make intelligent analysis of video content via a set of algorithms that analyse movement and determine if action is required based upon user defined rules. The chip, a Cyclone v FPGA, performs at 1080p/30fps with a 60Mpixel per second throughput.  Read More >>

 

Altera Releases Industry’s First 28-nm FPGA Development Kit

Full-Featured Stratix V GX FPGA-Based Development Kit Accelerates the Development of High-Bandwidth Systems

San Jose, Calif., September 6, 2011—Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today reached another milestone in driving the industry's rollout of 28-nm FPGAs by announcing availability of the Stratix® V GX FPGA Signal Integrity Development Kit, the first development kit featuring 28-nm FPGAs. This full-featured kit allows design engineers to accelerate the design and development of high-performance systems that meet the industry’s demand for more bandwidth. The Stratix V GX FPGA Signal Integrity Development Kit provides customers a platform for measuring and evaluating transceiver link performance ranging from 600 Mbps to 12.5 Gbps.   Read more details >>

Altera Product Catalog

FPGA Zone - Altera Product Catalog