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programmablelogicZONE Products for the week of June 8, 2009
Lattice Semiconductor Says…
Automotive Qualified Chip Scale 132 BGA Packaging for the LatticeXP2 Family
Automotive Processing Capability Now Available in a Single-Chip Solution with the Industry’s Smallest FPGA Footprint
Lattice Semiconductor has announced the availability of automotive temperature qualified (AEC-Q100) low-cost Chip Scale 132 BGA (ball grid array) packaging for the non-volatile LatticeXP2 FPGA family. Based on Lattice’s 90 nanometer hybrid flexiFLASH technology, the XP2 family’s new Chip Scale packaging enables realization of design requirements in the tightest form-factor automotive applications such as such as automotive camera modules, telematics systems, parking assistance systems and multimedia systems.
The Chip Scale 132 BGA packaging has been fully qualified and characterized to meet AEC-Q100 requirements from the Automotive Electronics Council, and is available for the XP2-5 and XP2-8 devices, with five thousand and eight thousand LUTs (Look Up Tables) available, respectively. Measuring 64 mm2 and 1.35 mm in height, the package footprint is the smallest available for non-volatile FPGAs.
“Our non-volatile XP2 family in AEC-Q100-qualified, low-cost Chip Scale 132 BGA packaging is a compelling solution for automotive designers who value high integration, source synchronous interfaces and low power consumption for tight form-factor applications,” said Sean Riley, Lattice Corporate Vice President and General Manager of High Density Solutions. “This single chip solution delivers the most FPGA value in the smallest footprint available, an important requirement for most automotive systems, including cameras, engine control modules and media centers.”
EN-Genius Says…
Lattice’s chip-scale-packaged versions of its AEC-Q100 qualified XP2 product line (originally introduced in 2008) should be a welcome development for the growing number of automotive and industrial applications that require a small form factor. The same flexibility and value-priced performance that is making these devices popular in automotive image processing should also give help them find a warm welcome in other mission-critical auto subsystems as well in industrial applications.
According to Lattice, this new packaging option was originally driven by on-board camera applications where FPGAs are now commonly used as a combination controller/image pre-processor for the imager chip that manage its white balance, AGC, etc…, while offloading the main DSP from mundane processing tasks like contrast enhancement. Since many of these cameras are sandwiched inside rearview mirrors or stuffed into compact lipstick-sized tubes, the space savings afforded by the new chip-scale package can be critical to a design’s success. The same compact form factor should prove popular for helping shrink the size of engine control or braking controllers units to better fit into today’s tightly-packed engine compartments.
But even without the smaller package, the XP2 series of AEC-Q100-certified FPGAs is a good match for the growing set of features and faster development cycles that are beginning to drive the automotive industry. Although even the low-priced XP2 often carries a somewhat higher per-unit cost than a high-volume ASIC, its lower development and tooling costs, plus its ability to support multiple variants of a basic design, often prove more cost-effective in the long run. Lattice says that in at least one case, an XP2 was used to replace a processor (an HC11 variant) in a legacy engine control module when the original part became unavailable.
Lattice’s Flash-based architecture gives the XP2 a 2 ms cold boot-up time that’s a couple of orders of magnitude quicker than most competing devices which must get their boot load from an external source. Meanwhile, the FPGA’s integrated hardware DSP blocks (discussed in our December 2007 review) can be used as video pre-processor blocks that free up precious MIPS in the main processor to run sophisticated algorithms: detecting whether a vehicle is staying in its own lane, whether a pedestrian has stepped in the car’s path, and even reading road signs. Most XP family members are also equipped with generic serial interfaces that are very useful for handling the outputs of high-speed ADCs which are used to read accelerometer and knock sensors. A so-called logical gearbox can be enabled within the chip to allow it to accept data streams of up to 750 Mbit/s. The XP2 7:1 LVDS interface can be clocked at speeds of up to 600 Mbit/s.
If you don’t need the full temperature range these parts offer, you can also consider the industrial-rated version of the XP2 series that was announced last week. Its family members are qualified for the less stringent industrial temperature range (-40ºC to +85ºC) which is more than adequate for many video security/surveillance, LCD/display controller, medical imaging and industrial control systems.
As one would expect, power consumption varies according to which size device you use and as a function of the application it is being used in. To give you a sense of the power levels you’d be dealing with, Lattice says that the typical power consumption level for its XP2-5 (5 k LUTs) device is 230 mW, based on 50% utilization of its logic, 100 MHz clock speed and a junction temperature of +25ºC. You can get more precise estimates of your design’s power consumption and junction temperature with Lattice’s Power Manager Tool which is now a part of the standard Lattice development tool set.
Production quantities of the new devices are available immediately, and Lattice can provide standard PPAP (Production Part Approval Process) documentation to automotive customers requiring it. In 100-k unit volume, the LA (Lattice Automotive) XP2-5 device is priced at $5.04.
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