New Lattice FPGAs on 40nm ?

[Brane2]

I'm playing with Lattice's MachXO2 and ECP3 for a few months now and now that MachXO3 is about to come out I wonder what happened to ECP4.

As I understand it, Lattice found its market niche in low-power/low-cost branch, especially now when they bought BlueSilicon and incprporated their program in ice40 series.

Knowing that they try to keep the cost down by using one process for all of their models and that MachXO2/ECP3 were done on 65 nm, while new ice40 and MachXO3 are on 40nm node, one would expect to see their high-end ECP4 on 40nm, too.

If main selling point of ECP3 was as cheapest FPGA with fast transceivers, this is diminishing now as MachXO3 will get those, too ( beside other upgrades).

But there is nothing on ECP4. Googling around shows 2 year old failed launch ( they obviously changed their mind) and nothing more.

Will there be ECP4 on 40nm and if so, what will be the update - faster transceivers or perhaps some cool ( preferably MIPS) core hardmacro onboard?

Or is Xilinx pushing too hard on that part of the market with Spartan-6 ?

I know there isn't anything official on the matter, I'm looking for more or less substantiated rumours...

 

[Sean Durkin]

Brane2 wrote:

I know there isn't anything official on the matter, I'm looking for
more or less substantiated rumours...

That I can provide...

We were planning on using ECP4 for a product and got early access to
documentation and silicon in the fall of 2012, I think. Lattice back
then was very eager to push this new family and were willing to provide
us with everything we needed for getting something up and running
quickly. Then suddenly out of the blue they let us know that upper
management had decided to scrap the family altogether.
Supposedly, the early engineering samples we received had no major
issues (at least there was nothing serious in the errata), so it seems
there were no technical reasons for this decision; but with Artix and
Cyclone competing, management thought they wouldn't stand a chance with
that family.

We were told Lattice would in the future concentrate on the
low-power/low-cost market, since mid-range and high-end were occupied by
X and A and they were just too small to e.g. get access to sub-40nm
technology that would be necessary to compete in that market. They told
us back then that there will not be an ECP4 with the promised
specifications, ever (which mainly meant the 6G SerDes), only maybe a
stripped-down, low-power version with maybe 3G SerDes, more like an
ECP4-L. Back then they hadn't yet made up their mind on that issue.

To be honest, since then I haven't looked into Lattice. A decision was
made to not use any Lattice parts for any products ever again after that
stunt they pulled. One of their sales people still calls from time to
time to promote the iCE devices (which are nice but completely useless
in our applications), and I think they would've let me know if there
were plans for a family like the ECP4 that was originally planned; so
far nothing...

HTH,
Sean

 

[Brane2]

Thanks.

Any thoughts on MachXO2/3 ?

Are they serious with that or are they retreating to reserve defence line ?

 

[Sean Durkin]

Brane2 wrote:

Thanks.

Any thoughts on MachXO2/3 ?

Are they serious with that or are they retreating to reserve defence line ?

No idea. Those parts weren't mentioned in our discussions with them.

I'd recommend contacting your local sales rep and/or Lattice FAE, but in
our case they also didn't know what hit them when ECP4 was cancelled, so
I'm not really sure how much sales reps and FAEs are "in the loop"
nowadays...

cu,
Sean

 

[rickman]

On 3/5/2014 2:21 AM, Sean Durkin wrote:

Brane2 wrote:
Thanks.

Any thoughts on MachXO2/3 ?

Are they serious with that or are they retreating to reserve defence line ?

No idea. Those parts weren't mentioned in our discussions with them.

I'd recommend contacting your local sales rep and/or Lattice FAE, but in
our case they also didn't know what hit them when ECP4 was cancelled, so
I'm not really sure how much sales reps and FAEs are "in the loop"
nowadays...

I am a Lattice user of the XP family which was obsoleted recently. I'm
not happy with that, but I'll consider that this was prompted by the fab
being closed so they had little choice even if the way they did it was
not so much to my liking.

The MachXO2/3 parts are indeed low end, but they continue to make one
mistake (in my opinion) that X and A also make. They just won't provide
parts in easy to use lower pin count packages. I picked the XP part
because it was the best trade off between size, I/O count, density and
ease of use (in terms of board fab). There is *nothing* else on the
market that meets my criteria.

Lattice prefers to provide very fine pitch BGA/CSP packages that require
very fine pitch board design rules and often very small vias. When you
think about their application focus, when you say, "low-power/low-cost
market", you should be saying, portable/hand held devices. In this
market package size is also a major factor, so no 64/100 pin QFPs

Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and practice some 3/3 design rule
layouts. lol But where to get them prototyped? Anyone know of 6
layer, fine pitch PCB batch fabs going on? I've found a couple that do
4 layer moderate pitch at very reasonable prices.

--

Rick

 

On Saturday, 1 March 2014 13:34:01 UTC+1, Brane2 wrote:

I'm playing with Lattice's MachXO2 and ECP3 for a few months now and now that MachXO3 is about to come out I wonder what happened to ECP4.



As I understand it, Lattice found its market niche in low-power/low-cost branch, especially now when they bought BlueSilicon and incprporated their program in ice40 series.



Knowing that they try to keep the cost down by using one process for all of their models and that MachXO2/ECP3 were done on 65 nm, while new ice40 and MachXO3 are on 40nm node, one would expect to see their high-end ECP4 on 40nm, too.



If main selling point of ECP3 was as cheapest FPGA with fast transceivers, this is diminishing now as MachXO3 will get those, too ( beside other upgrades).



But there is nothing on ECP4. Googling around shows 2 year old failed launch ( they obviously changed their mind) and nothing more.



Will there be ECP4 on 40nm and if so, what will be the update - faster transceivers or perhaps some cool ( preferably MIPS) core hardmacro onboard?



Or is Xilinx pushing too hard on that part of the market with Spartan-6 ?



I know there isn't anything official on the matter, I'm looking for more or less substantiated rumours...

Well in breaking news: ECP5 has been announced (on a 40 nm process)!

 

[Brane2]

Dne petek, 18. april 2014 08:38:50 UTC je oseba ajp...@gmail.com napisala:

Well in breaking news: ECP5 has been announced (on a 40 nm process)!

ECP5 announcement is out probably for a few weeks now.

It feels as trimmed down as new MahXO3L is against old MachXO2.

When I complained about this, Lattice basically hinted everyone tho chill out.

MachXO3L is tweaked and parred for their biggest customers, probably for some tablets, phones etc etc.

MachXO3H is yet to come.

And it seems like it's that way with ECP5. It's basically just redone for 40nm.

And I keep hearing those rumours about "Sapphire", so that might be it- something like ECP5-H(igh end)

 

[Brane2]

For those interested in MachXO:

MachX03L seems almost the same as MachXO2. At least I couldn't find any difference. And as I checked it against MachXO2 pricewise on Digikey, they came out the same.

Until someoneone pointed to "thingie" with FLASH.

MachXO3L doesn't have the same FLASH block as MachXO2 does. XO2 is reprogrammable 10.000x with data retention of 10yr. XO3L is reprogrammable _TWICE_

Or as Lattice calls it "Multi time reprogramable". With multi = 2.

But as said, this is just XO3L - XO3 part for extreme cheapscates ;o)