General > General Technical Chat
AMD acquires Xilinx
Gyro:
No, Lattice. They bought up Silicon Image too, for their HDMI IP. They seem to have been hit / constrained by a couple of large stock acquisitions in the past few years and Trump blocked their purchase in 2017 by Canyon Bridge on national security (foreign investment) grounds.
According to Wikipedia, their ex-AMD CEO since 2018 has moved their focus exclusively to low power FPGAs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_Semiconductor
Just a casual personal interest from times past.
Someone:
--- Quote from: gnuarm on April 10, 2021, 05:44:48 pm ---My main issue with Lattice is while X and A are shooting large bore guns at the high end of FPGAs, Lattice is shooting bird shot at the low end, specifically targeted to the mobile market requiring very tiny packages with very fine PCB features. No one is addressing a middle range of easy to use, low impact packaging with other than microscope size parts. I can very seldom use a 1 kLUT device. I typically need more than 20 or 30 I/Os. Now days that puts me in a ~200 pin BGA! I'd like to see a family of FPGAs that encroach on MCU territory.
I did see where Altera has Cyclone IV parts in a FBGA-169 package with 1.0 mm pitch, but even at JLCPCB it's a $20 part. That's the smallest part in the family and it has NO multipliers.
--- End quote ---
Hand solderable parts? ICE40, MachXO or IGLOO nano, cheap small, stocked.
You want a hand solderable part that has multipliers? Spartan 3, or the odd parts from Efinix, Spartan 6, or ICE40
Bassman59:
--- Quote from: gnuarm on April 10, 2021, 05:44:48 pm ---My main issue with Lattice is while X and A are shooting large bore guns at the high end of FPGAs, Lattice is shooting bird shot at the low end, specifically targeted to the mobile market requiring very tiny packages with very fine PCB features. No one is addressing a middle range of easy to use, low impact packaging with other than microscope size parts. I can very seldom use a 1 kLUT device. I typically need more than 20 or 30 I/Os. Now days that puts me in a ~200 pin BGA! I'd like to see a family of FPGAs that encroach on MCU territory.
--- End quote ---
Microchip (formerly Microsemi, formerly Actel, speaking of acquisitions!) Igloo nano might be the ticket.
--- Quote ---I did see where Altera has Cyclone IV parts in a FBGA-169 package with 1.0 mm pitch, but even at JLCPCB it's a $20 part. That's the smallest part in the family and it has NO multipliers.
--- End quote ---
$20 without the configuration storage device.
gnuarm:
--- Quote from: Gyro on April 10, 2021, 06:15:17 pm ---No, Lattice. They bought up Silicon Image too, for their HDMI IP. They seem to have been hit / constrained by a couple of large stock acquisitions in the past few years and Trump blocked their purchase in 2017 by Canyon Bridge on national security (foreign investment) grounds.
According to Wikipedia, their ex-AMD CEO since 2018 has moved their focus exclusively to low power FPGAs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_Semiconductor
Just a casual personal interest from times past.
--- End quote ---
I think this story has grown with each retelling. Never take Wikipedia literally without confirming with the sources if they have any. Going back to the source which is just a report on a Lattice event the only relevant quote is, Lattice wants to "become the low power programmable leader". They didn't use the much stronger term "moved their focus exclusively to low power FPGAs". It's not hard to become the low power leader because no one else is really addressing that market. It correlates with smaller and lower margin devices which the other players are not so interested in. However, they don't want to wake up one morning to find Lattice and others have eaten their breakfast, so I'm sure they are making inroads into this market. Not unlike Tesla and the major auto makers. No one is standing still. They just aren't falling over themselves to get out of Tesla's way because Tesla has a long way to go to catch up. Likewise with Lattice.
gnuarm:
--- Quote from: Someone on April 10, 2021, 11:29:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: gnuarm on April 10, 2021, 05:44:48 pm ---My main issue with Lattice is while X and A are shooting large bore guns at the high end of FPGAs, Lattice is shooting bird shot at the low end, specifically targeted to the mobile market requiring very tiny packages with very fine PCB features. No one is addressing a middle range of easy to use, low impact packaging with other than microscope size parts. I can very seldom use a 1 kLUT device. I typically need more than 20 or 30 I/Os. Now days that puts me in a ~200 pin BGA! I'd like to see a family of FPGAs that encroach on MCU territory.
I did see where Altera has Cyclone IV parts in a FBGA-169 package with 1.0 mm pitch, but even at JLCPCB it's a $20 part. That's the smallest part in the family and it has NO multipliers.
--- End quote ---
Hand solderable parts? ICE40, MachXO or IGLOO nano, cheap small, stocked.
You want a hand solderable part that has multipliers? Spartan 3, or the odd parts from Efinix, Spartan 6, or ICE40
--- End quote ---
I gave a fair description of my needs that very few if any of the Lattice parts meet. The XO3D does the job, but is not so cheap. Spartan 3 devices are older than the XP devices that are EOL in the design I may need to refresh. No way I'm putting them in a new product. They are also increasing in price.
I've never found an IGLOO part that was cheap. Which Spartan 6 part are you talking about? Maybe the QFP144 that is wider than my board? The iCE40 parts all either have too few I/Os or too few LUTs. I have a Lattice selection guide with the useful combinations highlighted and none other than the higher priced XO3D has what I need.
The Gowin GW1N-9 in a 100 QFP would be perfect. But they are not well respected by the US government, so it's not a good idea to use their parts in products sold to government agencies. I don't want to end up in a Huawei like situation.
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