High-Tech-Marketing

Selecting an FPGA By Paul Dillien The Market • In 2011 the total PLD market was $4.97B – The FPGA portion was worth $4.1B

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 2 FPGA Applications • The dominant applications have always been wired and wireless communications

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 3 FPGA Family Target Applications

Three sectors High performance Mid Range Low Cost

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 4 High Performance FPGA Logic Capability

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 5 High Performance FPGA Memory

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 6 Advanced FPGA features • Transceivers – Wide range available from 3 to 28 Gbps • Complex DSP blocks – 36 devices have >1000 • Hard ARM processors • Specialist interfaces: – PCI

DSP hard macro taken from the Virtex-5 FPGA data sheet – Ethernet MACs Reproduced by courtesy of Xilinx Inc. – DDR controllers – SPI-4 – Analog

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 7 28-nm FPGAs • No shortage of choice at the latest node

• Altera plans 53 different devices – 17 Stratix – 14 Arria – 22 Cyclone • Xilinx plans 31 different devices – 3 Artix – 7 Kintex – 17 Virtex – 4 Zynq

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 8 FPGAs from recent start-ups (1) • SiliconBlue – Acquired by Lattice in Dec 2011 – Low power CMOS for hand held applications such as smart phones and tablets – NV OTP memory to hold configuration – Complexities from 1k to 17k LEs – Standby power 15 to 150 uW – Small packages or die sales – Prices below $1 in volume – Shipped 10M devices

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 9 FPGAs from recent start-ups (2) • Tabula – ABAX family – “Spacetime” product – Virtual 3D – Think of it as timeshared hardware – “reuse” the same silicon up to 8 times – Clocks at 1.6 GHz – Published A1EC04 at $150 for 2k

Tabula concept of 3D as used in ABAX FPGAs – Tool chain is cloud-based Reproduced by courtesy of Tabula Inc.

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 10 FPGAs from recent start-ups (3) • Achronix – Speedster family – asynchronous or “clockless logic” product – Next generation will use Intel 22-nm Finfets – “750 MHz” product will offer 2.5 M LEs – “1.5 GHz” limited to 700k LUTs

Achronix Speedster FPGAs use asynchronous signalling internally to reduce delays Reproduced by courtesy of Achronix Semiconductor High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 11 FPGAs costs and prices (1) • Device price book – Set base price – Add package option deltas – Add speed and temperature deltas – Repeat across family members

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 12 FPGAs costs and prices (2) • Cost per 1k Logic Element (LE) using 1+ prices – Spartan-6 ranges from $1.08 to $3.08 – Virtex-6 ranges from $7.13 to $17.50

• The Virtex cost per 1k LE is 6X compared to Spartan

• Altera has a similar profile

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 13 FPGAs costs and prices (3)

Typical adders Spartan-6 Virtex-6

Speed grade 10% 25 to 40%

Temperature grade 15% 40%

Package delta 4 to 12 25 to 70 per pin cents cents Reductions since 18% 15% to 30% July 2011

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 14 FPGAs costs and prices (4)

• Key priorities to minimise costs – Target low cost family if possible – Target slowest speed grade – Target smallest package – Target latest technology High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 15 FPGAs costs and prices (5) • Options for Procurement – Price projections for when production is expected – Against realistic production quantity • Options for Design Engineering – Floorplan – P&R settings to maximum – Synthesis tools – Pipelining/clock doubling – Logic duplication

– Partitioning Reproduced by courtesy of Xilinx Inc. High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 16 FPGAs costs and prices (6) • Pipelining/clock doubling – An actual example – Range of MACsec cores -1G, 10G and 40Gbps – Key elements are encryption cores in Tx and Rx – Add pipelining to get from 1G to 10G – Clock doubling from 10 to 40G

Throughput 1G 10G 40G Slice LUTs 17,031 32,119 42,350 RAM 18K 4 4 55 RAM 36K 5 5 9

Reproduced by courtesy of Algotronix Ltd. High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 17 FPGAs partitioning for lower cost solution

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 18 Selecting an FPGA - Summary

• Wide range of complexities, technologies and capabilities are available

• Start-ups looking for a niche

• Significant cost reductions are possible with careful device selection

• Take a flexible engineering approach

High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 19 Contact Details Paul Dillien Email: [email protected] Tel: 07786 234904

For information on The FPGA Report and FPGA Comparison Chart visit: http://www.high-tech-marketing.co.uk/FPGA/ Block RAM Maximum Vendor Family Part Number Equivalent LEs Core Voltage pll/dlls Transceivers DSP Blocks Kbits I/O Achronix Speedster SPD180 163,840 10,008 933 1.0 16 40 270 Altera Arria II GX EP2AGX190 181,165 9,939 612 0.9 6 16 656 Altera Arria V GX EP5AGXA5 190,000 11,800 544 1.1 12 24 600 variable Altera Stratix IV GX EP4SGX180 175,000 13,627 744 0.9 8 36 920 Lattice ECP3 ECP3-150 149,000 6,850 586 1.2 10 + 2 16 320 Lattice LatticeECP ECP30150 149,000 6,696 586 1.2 12 16 320 Xilinx Virtex-4 FX XC4VFX140 141,408 10,080 896 1.2 20 24 192 Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT XC5VFX200T 196,608 16,416 960 1.0 18 24 384 Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT XC5VLX155T 155,648 7,632 680 1.0 18 16 128 Xilinx Virtex-5 TXT XC5VTX150T 148,480 8,208 680 1.0 18 40 80 Xilinx Virtex-6 CXT XC6VCX195T 199,680 12,384 600 1.0 20 16 640 Xilinx Virtex-6 LXT XC6VLX195T 199,680 12,384 600 0.9 or 1.0 20 20 640 High Tech Marketing Copyright 2012 20