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programmablelogicZONE Products for the week of October 13, 2008
Lattice Semiconductor Says…
Lattice Accelerates PCI Express System Design with New Low Cost LatticeECP2M Development Kit
Users can obtain working PCI Express hardware in thirty minutes and a known good starting point for a design in under two hours
Lattice Semiconductor has announced the availability of a new low cost PCI Express development kit for its LatticeECP2M family of low cost 90nm FPGAs. Based on a new PCI Express x1/x4 evaluation board, the kit accelerates development of PCI Express designs using the LatticeECP2M family. The kit has been developed from the ground up to accelerate the evaluation of Lattice PCI Express technology, demonstrate a range of solutions matching typical application requirements and speed users to design exploration.
The new kit includes four key capabilities for quick evaluation and rapid, low cost PCI Express system design. First, the kit enables users to bring up running PCI Express hardware in thirty minutes or less. Second, various demo executables address control plane through data plane performance requirements. Third, source files for the demos are available that enable rebuilding designs up to a known good starting point. Finally, the kit enables a rapid transition to design exploration through the included software tools, IP enabled evaluation process and project source directories.
“The new LatticeECP2M PCI Express development kit is a prime example of how Lattice delivers a targeted solution to FPGA designers,” said Sean Riley, Lattice Corporate Vice President and General Manager of High Density Solutions. “The LatticeECP2M family provides a cost-effective alternative to the high-end SERDES-based FPGAs and ASSPs that traditionally have been used for PCI Express applications. With this new development kit, designers can rapidly evaluate, develop and prototype their PCI Express applications using LatticeECP2M devices.”
About the LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit
The new LatticeECP2M PCI Express development kit is the first in a series of development kits that will support Lattice devices and enable users to obtain working hardware in thirty minutes and then a known good starting point for a design in under two hours. There are several demos available, including a control plane application, a throughput demo for high-bandwidth applications, and two demos supporting scatter-gather DMA capabilities: a color bar demo and an image transfer demo (which also makes use of the Lattice Scatter-Gather DMA IP core).
All of the demos use the just released LatticeECP2M PCI Express x1/x4 Endpoint ispLeverCORE IP, version 3.3. The included low cost LatticeECP2M PCI Express x1/x4 evaluation board has been optimized with several features designed to make the evaluation process more productive, including support of both x1 and x4 link edge card fingers and LEDs for each link that are visible from outside the PC chassis to indicate whether the link is active. Also included are a 60-day evaluation license for Lattice’s ispLEVER software design tools (for new users), the ability to evaluate the new LatticeECP2M PCI Express ispLeverCORE IP and project source directories, all of which can be used to create a template for design exploration.
EN-Genius Says…
Lattice’s new development platform should go a long way towards closing the tool gap that exists between them and their two larger competitors (Altera and Xilinx). This well-provisioned kit provides a quick, easy way for designers to get comfortable with using their SerDes equipped ECP2M family in many of the high volume PCI Express applications where these devices’ low cost makes them extremely attractive.
A couple of years ago Lattice shook up the FPGA world with the introduction of its SerDes-equipped ECPM2 product line (reviewed here October 2006) that put PCI Express capabilities on a $23 device. While the packaging and process limitations of the ECP2M series don’t give it all the signal integrity capabilities of, say, Altera’s premium-priced Stratix II GX series, it delivers the basic functionality to nicely satisfy the requirements of many PCIe applications. That’s why Lattice’s bold move was in large part responsible for pushing Altera to roll out its value-priced Arria line of SerDes-equipped products (reviewed here May 2007) which offered better performance but still could not touch Lattice’s pricing.
Surprisingly, Lattice has not enjoyed all the success it deserves, despite the growing adoption of PCIe as the system glue of choice for most networking and computing applications. I think that some of the slow acceptance is due to engineers greater familiarity with the two major brands plus the exceptional job that both companies have done in providing a comprehensive set of tools and development platforms. By including canned solutions both data plane and data plane functions that can be quickly turned into useful applications this evaluation board should help overcome some of the market resistance that Lattice has experienced as it competes with its larger rivals.
The development kit is available now, with a list price of $895.00.
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