Lattice Expands Stack of mVision and Sentry Solutions

Source: Lattice Official Blog

In 2018, Lattice introduced the Lattice sensAI solution to accelerate and simplify the development of low-power Edge AI co-processing solutions for a variety of markets. The concept of providing everything developers need (modular hardware platforms, demos, reference designs, neural network IP cores, software tools for development, and custom design services) has resonated with the industry when evaluating, developing, and deploying FPGA-based ML and AI solutions.

In 2019, we announced a new roadmap for our solutions, extending the stack model to other key applications and markets for Lattice’s low-power FPGAs. Shortly after launching sensAI v2.0, we also released two new stacks: Lattice mVision for embedded vision and Lattice Sentry for system control and protection against unauthorized access to system firmware.

The timing of these announcements is ideal as support for embedded vision and firmware security becomes increasingly important to Lattice customers. Experts involved in both technologies agree.

Allied Market Research states: “The global machine vision systems market size was valued at $29.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $74.9 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 11.3% from 2020 to 2027.”

The National Vulnerability Database reports that the number of firmware vulnerabilities grew by more than 700% between 2016 and 2019.

That’s why we are excited to announce today significant updates to our mVision and Sentry solution stacks. Major updates to the Lattice mVision solution stack include:

Expanded support for automotive, industrial and medical embedded vision applications. Lattice has added new development boards to the mVision stack to support popular image sensors for industrial, medical and automotive applications. Supported image sensors include Sony IMX464 and IMX568 and ON Semiconductor's AR0344CS.

The new Lattice ISP reference design expands Lattice's mVision solution offering to customers, increasing adoption while demonstrating our commitment to our customers.

Support for the Lattice Propel design environment. Propel is a design environment for accelerating the development of low-power, small-footprint Lattice FPGAs based on embedded processors. The tool includes a complete set of graphical and command-line tools for creating, analyzing, compiling, and debugging hardware designs for FPGA-based processor systems and software designs for the processor systems.

The Lattice mVision Solutions Stack v2.0 supports popular new image sensors as well as new image signal processing IP cores and reference designs to help developers quickly and easily design intelligent vision applications at the edge.

Key features of Sentry 2.0 include:

Enhanced security: The Sentry solution stack supports Lattice Mach-NX secure control FPGAs and secure IP blocks that support 384-bit cryptography (ECC-256/384 and HMAC-SHA-384), which better protects Sentry-protected firmware from unauthorized access. Support for 384-bit encryption is a requirement for many next-generation server platforms.

4x Faster Pre-Boot Authentication: Sentry 2.0 supports faster ECDSA (40 milliseconds), SHA (up to 70 Mbps), and QSPI (64 MHz). These features allow Sentry 2.0 to deliver faster boot times, helping to minimize system downtime and reduce the risk of firmware attacks during the boot process.

Ability to monitor up to five firmware images in real-time: Further extending the Platform Firmware Resilience (PFR)-compliant hardware root of trust enabled by Lattice Sentry, the stack is able to monitor up to five motherboard components in real-time, both at boot time and during ongoing system operation. Competing security solutions (e.g., MCU-based security solutions) lack the processing power to properly monitor multiple components simultaneously in real-time.

Lattice Sentry v2.0 provides developers with an efficient and secure way to quickly implement enhanced system and cryptographic applications, including support for 384-bit encryption, a requirement for next-generation server platforms.