Lattice buys SiBlue for $62 million

[rickman]

I think this will be one of the more significant semiconductor
acquisitions of the year.

http://www.fpgagurus.edn.com/blog/fpga-gurus-blog/lattice-picks-siliconblue-62-million

I've been using Lattice parts for the last few years and I plan to be
using SiBlue parts this coming year.

I see that a SiBlue part is being used in a watch by Citizen.

http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/other/4231148/Cool-Beans--First-FPGA-in-a-watch-

I believe the ultimate market for FPGAs will be low cost, high volume
devices like this. Sooner or later this low power technology will be
combined with the analog functionality of the Cypress and Actel
devices.

Rick

 

[Jim Granville]

On Dec 10, 1:30 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think this will be one of the more significant semiconductor
acquisitions of the year.

http://www.fpgagurus.edn.com/blog/fpga-gurus-blog/lattice-picks-silic...

I've been using Lattice parts for the last few years and I plan to be
using SiBlue parts this coming year.

I see that a SiBlue part is being used in a watch by Citizen.

http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/other/4231148/Cool-Beans--F...

I believe the ultimate market for FPGAs will be low cost, high volume
devices like this.  Sooner or later this low power technology will be
combined with the analog functionality of the Cypress and Actel
devices.

Rick

Certainly an Interesting move.
Lattice have been slow releasing their MachXO2 family, and have just
added one MLF package.
Their smallest MachXO2 BGA package certainly indicates a small die, so
we would like to see more MLF packages.
Prices indicated on the smaller siblings of the MachXo2 are also
higher than the Logic ratio would infer

Could take a while to merge the two offerings, and quite a but of
overlap.

-jg

 

[rickman]

On Dec 10, 12:15 am, Jim Granville <j.m.granvi...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Dec 10, 1:30 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:









I think this will be one of the more significant semiconductor
acquisitions of the year.

http://www.fpgagurus.edn.com/blog/fpga-gurus-blog/lattice-picks-silic...

I've been using Lattice parts for the last few years and I plan to be
using SiBlue parts this coming year.

I see that a SiBlue part is being used in a watch by Citizen.

http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/other/4231148/Cool-Beans--F...

I believe the ultimate market for FPGAs will be low cost, high volume
devices like this.  Sooner or later this low power technology will be
combined with the analog functionality of the Cypress and Actel
devices.

Rick

Certainly an Interesting move.
Lattice have been slow releasing their MachXO2 family, and have just
added one MLF package.
Their smallest MachXO2 BGA package certainly indicates a small die, so
we would like to see more MLF packages.
Prices indicated on the smaller siblings of the MachXo2 are also
higher than the Logic ratio would infer

Could take a while to merge the two offerings, and quite a but of
overlap.

-jg

I don't expect they will push to merge product lines. Those products
were conceived as viable products competing with the market as a whole
and I expect they will continue them as such. I guess you are really
suggesting that the next generation might be a combined family
combining the best features of each. That may be. I don't know what
compromises SiBlue had to make to get the low power. I know their
part is ram backed up with one time programmable memory rather than
flash. That certainly has good utility, but flash is always better.
Any board I design with the SiBlue part will have an SPI flash on it
while my designs with the Lattice XP parts don't.

Otherwise I don't know what shortcomings the SiBlue parts have.

Rick