Stratix III
Altera Sails into Sixty-five

With the usual next-node battle cry of "power, performance, price, and productivity," Altera sailed into sixty-five-nanometer territory today with the announcement of their much-anticipated Stratix III 65nm high-performance FPGA family. 

Altera has put considerable focus on power with this family, bringing in power-targeted architectural changes paired with powerful design tool support.  For years, power in FPGAs was not an important consideration.  The people paying the big bucks for older-generation FPGAs had power to burn along with their cash.  As times and technologies have changed, however, so has the power picture.  Millions of transistors have turned into billions, megahertz have multiplied, and leakage currents have leapt into prominence, as feature sizes (and thus gate oxides) have continued to shrink.

On the system side, FPGA power has gained prominence, too.  As bandwidth requirements have risen, form factors have shrunk, and heat has become an issue.  Also, with FPGAs moving from supporting cast to starring roles in many systems, they have taken the spotlight in power consumption as well.  The result of all this is that Altera saw a chance to make power a clear differentiator with Stratix III, and they've made significant strides with their efforts.

With 65nm, we expected supply voltages to be down to 1.0V.  Altera has thrown us a bit of a surprise with both 1.1V operation for maximum performance and 0.9V for minimum power consumption. The lower voltages help with the dynamic power picture right from the start, and the 0.9V option offers to cut static power by over half from Altera's 90nm Stratix II numbers.  [more]

Low-Cost ASIC Conversion Targets Consumer Success
by Terry Danzer, AMI Semiconductor, Inc.

Design for portability is a valuable technique for engineers targeting consumer markets, seeking a cost-effective transition from an FPGA platform used for rapid development and prototyping to create price-competitive products that will win sales in fast paced consumer market.

Design Conversion for Marketing Objectives

FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) provide a powerful tool for designers seeking to satisfy consumer demands for complex, multi-functional products. The FPGA’s fast development cycles accelerate the learning and debugging processes, which serves demands for short time-to-market that is characteristic of the consumer space. Initial product development using an FPGA solution also facilitates entry into new and untried markets at lower cost and dramatically reduced risk.

But the intense price pressures that characterizes most consumer electronic markets, does not match with the relatively high costs of FPGA silicon and packaging. Power consumption in FPGA’s can be also be high, compared to that of an application specific implementation. This can be a significant drawback, particularly if the end product is battery powered. [more]