Microsemi targets new fpga range at cost optimised market

Paul Ekas, vp of marketing, said: "These devices will be best in class for cost optimised markets." He admitted that Microsemi hasn't been a competitor in these target markets, mainly because its parts 'lacked key features'. "IGLOO2 changes that," he claimed, "with a five fold increase in logic capacity and a threefold increase in core performance." Ekas said the target markets for the IGLOO2 range are worth more than $1.2bn. All are markets where Microsemi has little presence and are described by Ekas as 'a big opportunity and a rapidly growing segment'. According to the company, the non volatile flash based devices have a range of mainstream fpga features and integrate a high performance memory subsystem (HPMS). The parts will also bring dsp ability to Microsemi fpgas for the first time, allowing some signal processing. Essentially, Microsemi will be targeting Altera's Cyclone and Xilinx' Spartan. "Many of our target apps need a 3.3V supply," Ekas claimed, "but Altera and Xilinx are finding it harder to offer this because of their process technology choices." The HPMS embeds common user functions, including 32k embedded sram blocks. Also included is up to 512kbyte of flash, which allows users to store such things as Ethernet MAC IDs, user keys and personalisation data. In addition to supporting secure boot for processors, the HPMS integrates two DMA controllers and a two port memory cache. In terms of communications, the fpgas will have up to 16 serdes lanes, running at 5Gbit/s, and up to four PCI Express end points. There will be seven members of the family, with logic capacity ranging from 6k to 146k logic elements (LE) and from 11 to 240 18x18 math blocks. The M2GL050, with 56k LEs, is in volume production and the remaining configurations will appear by early 2014. Looking to address industrial applications, IGLOO2 fpgas will be available for use in temperatures of up to 125°C.