High-Tech-Marketing. Selecting an FPGA. By Paul Dillien

Transcription

1 High-Tech-Marketing Selecting an FPGA By Paul Dillien

2 The Market In 2011 the total PLD market was $4.97B The FPGA portion was worth $4.1B 2

3 FPGA Applications The dominant applications have always been wired and wireless communications 3

4 FPGA Family Target Applications Three sectors High performance Mid Range Low Cost 4

5 High Performance FPGA Logic Capability 5

6 High Performance FPGA Memory 6

7 Transceivers Advanced FPGA features Wide range available from 3 to 28 Gbps Complex DSP blocks 36 devices have >1000 Hard ARM processors Specialist interfaces: PCI Ethernet MACs DDR controllers SPI-4 Analog DSP hard macro taken from the Virtex-5 FPGA data sheet Reproduced by courtesy of Xilinx Inc. 7

8 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 8

9 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 9

10 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 Tool chain is cloud-based Tabula concept of 3D as used in ABAX FPGAs Reproduced by courtesy of Tabula Inc. 10

11 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 11

12 FPGAs costs and prices (1) Device price book Set base price Add package option deltas Add speed and temperature deltas Repeat across family members 12

13 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 13

14 FPGAs costs and prices (3) Typical adders Spartan-6 Virtex-6 Speed grade 10% 25 to 40% Temperature grade 15% 40% Package delta per pin Reductions since July to 12 cents 25 to 70 cents 18% 15% to 30% 14

15 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 15

16 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. 16

17 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 RAM 36K Reproduced by courtesy of Algotronix Ltd. 17

18 FPGAs partitioning for lower cost solution 18

19 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 19

20 Paul Dillien Contact Details Tel: For information on The FPGA Report and FPGA Comparison Chart visit: Vendor Family Part Number Equivalent LEs Block RAM Maximum Kbits I/O Core Voltage pll/dlls Transceivers DSP Blocks Achronix Speedster SPD ,840 10, Altera Arria II GX EP2AGX ,165 9, Altera Arria V GX EP5AGXA5 190,000 11, variable Altera Stratix IV GX EP4SGX ,000 13, Lattice ECP3 ECP ,000 6, Lattice LatticeECP ECP ,000 6, Xilinx Virtex-4 FX XC4VFX ,408 10, Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT XC5VFX200T 196,608 16, Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT XC5VLX155T 155,648 7, Xilinx Virtex-5 TXT XC5VTX150T 148,480 8, Xilinx Virtex-6 CXT XC6VCX195T 199,680 12, Xilinx Virtex-6 LXT XC6VLX195T 199,680 12, or