Lattice continues to develop 28nm FD-SOI and launches CertusPro-NX

Recently, Lattice announced the fourth product of the Nexus platform, CertusPro-NX. Lattice has been developing general-purpose FPGAs on the Nexus platform for 18 months. In 2019, when Lattice announced the launch of the Nexus platform using 28nm FD-SOI, low-power FPGAs entered a new era. In the following 18 months, Lattice has been strictly implementing the development roadmap proposed before, and has successively launched the Nexus platform's embedded vision FPGA CrossLink-NX, general-purpose FPGA Certus-NX, security FPGA Mach-NX, and now the second-generation general-purpose FPGA CertusPro-NX.

Compared with similar FPGAs, CertusPro-NX not only has greatly improved power efficiency, but also provides the highest bandwidth in the smallest package size, and is the only FPGA in its class that supports LPDDR4 external memory. CertusPro-NX FPGA has powerful performance and the highest logic density in the Nexus product series, designed to accelerate application development in the fields of communications, computing, industry, automobiles and consumer electronics.

Nexus Platform Redefines Low-Power FPGA

While Xilinx and Intel have turned to large-scale computing such as data centers and cloud computing, Lattice continues to focus on the low-power FPGA market.

Leveraging its long-standing experience in the low-power FPGA field and advanced 28 nm FD-SOI semiconductor manufacturing process, Lattice has successfully developed the Nexus platform, providing low-power, high-performance, high-reliability and small-size solutions.

The Nexus technology platform has three levels of innovation, including:

Circuit: Compared with bulk CMOS process, power consumption is reduced by 75% and soft error rate is reduced by more than 100 times

Architecture: Large embedded RAM blocks optimize implementation of common AI algorithms

Solution: Provide more complete solutions, including IP, reference design and software collection

Specifically, for circuits. The insulated gate of FD-SOI technology enables programmable feedback bias, which can optimize performance/power consumption. The critical area is greatly reduced, and the reliability of soft error rate (SER) is improved by 100 times. FD-SOI takes advantage of the bulk CMOS process and has fewer process steps.

For the architecture, Lattice has developed an embedded large RAM optimized for network edge computing, avoiding external memory access, improving performance, and avoiding the use of external memory to generate more power consumption.

Regarding solutions, Lattice mainly focuses on three major directions: AI, embedded vision and security. It provides reference designs, kits, soft IP and software, and complete end-to-end solutions to accelerate the time to market.

Pu Xiaoshuang, director of field technical support at Lattice Semiconductor, said that for the 28nm FD-SOINexus platform, Lattice will launch two new products in the future to continue to expand the advantages of the platform.

CertusPro-NX Analysis

Pu Xiaoshuang gave a detailed interpretation of the specific product innovations of CertusPro-NX.

CertusPro-NX FPGAs are designed to support customer innovation in a variety of applications, including data co-processing in intelligent systems, high-bandwidth signal bridging in 5G communication infrastructure, and sensor interface bridging in ADAS systems. Key features of the Lattice CertusPro-NX FPGA family include:

Industry-leading power efficiency – By leveraging Lattice’s innovations in FPGA architecture and low-power FD-SOI manufacturing process, CertusPro-NX devices deliver exceptional performance while consuming four times less power than competing FPGAs.

Industry's Highest System Bandwidth - CertusPro-NX FPGAs support up to eight programmable SERDES channels at speeds up to 10.3 Gbps, providing the highest system bandwidth in its class to support mainstream communication and display interfaces such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express, SLVS-EC, CoaXPress and DisplayPort.

Optimized network edge processing capabilities - To meet the needs of stable data co-processing for AI and machine learning applications at the network edge, the on-chip memory capacity of CertusPro-NX FPGA is up to 65% higher than other similar FPGAs. CertusPro-NX devices are currently the only low-power FPGAs that support the LPDDR4 DRAM storage standard, and since LPDDR4 DRAM has become the mainstream trend in the future, it has become the first choice for this device.

High logic density - CertusPro-NX FPGA supports up to 100K logic cells, making it the device with the highest logic density among all Nexus-based FPGAs currently available.

Industry-leading reliability - Critical applications in automotive, industrial and communications must have high reliability to achieve predictable performance and ensure user safety. Thanks to innovations in the Lattice Nexus technology platform, CertusPro-NX devices have 100 times better soft error resistance.

Smallest Size in Its Class – CertusPro-NX FPGAs feature a design area of ​​just 81 mm2, which is 6.5 times smaller than competing devices. Small size is a key design consideration for developers of SFP modules used in industrial cameras or communication systems.

“Many edge devices require low power, high system bandwidth, small form factor components, robust memory resources, and high reliability for better thermal management, high-speed chip-to-chip communication, compact design, efficient data processing, and support for mission-critical applications,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group. “Lattice’s CertusPro-NX FPGAs meet all of these requirements; in particular, their mean time between failures (MTBF) is far superior to competing products, and they offer the lowest power consumption in their class.”

The specific comparison between Certus-NX and CertusPro-NX is shown in the following table:

In terms of applications, Lattice currently provides applications including smart SFP+ optical modules, security control and hardware management, machine vision, frame grabbers, smart camera AI processing, etc.

Software Upgrade

Just as important as the hardware is the new software that works with the new CertuxPro-NX FPGAs. A new version of Lattices’ Radiant software, Radiant 3.0, can now be used with the CertusPro-NX devices. In addition, Lattice has brought several new features to the software to improve the user experience, including making it faster and easier to use.

Radiant 3.0 software features include:

Compared with the previous version, the running time is reduced by 15% and the design performance is improved by 7%

Speed ​​up the iterative design process by separating timing analysis from other operations and allowing them to run independently

Choice between running the Lattice Synthesis Engine (LSE) and the Synplify Pro synthesis engine

SERDES analysis tools enhanced to accommodate higher SERDES bandwidth support in CertusPro-NX devices

Improve signal traceability throughout the design flow through a graphical user interface (GUI)

Lattice is continuously improving its competitiveness by providing more powerful products, more optimized tools and more complete platforms to promote the continued development of low-power FPGAs.