Adding transceivers to fpgas is not new; it was first done a decade ago as part of the former Lucent Microelectronics Orca family. But it is now commonplace, especially with the emergence of several serial interface standards. “These [transceiver] fpgas account for 10 to 20% of the total market and this is growing fast,” said Shakeel Peera, director of strategic marketing, high performance fpgas for Lattice Semiconductor.
Altera launched its latest family of transceiver fpgas in May. Dubbed Arria GX, the family targets three specific serial interface standards: Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), PCI Express (PCIe) and Serial RapidIO. “Some applications are so cost sensitive that we believe a family like this will expand the market overall,” said Altera’s Danny Biran, senior vice president of product and corporate marketing.
Arria complements Altera’s Stratix II GX, a family of transceiver fpgas that supports six serial interface standards at speeds up to 6.375Gbit/s. Lattice has, for almost a year, had two transceiver fpga families – the SC and ECP2/M – that target different cost/performance points, whilst Xilinx’ Virtex 5 family has four platforms, three of which have on chip transceivers. “That’s because so many applications require it,” said John Heighton, Xilinx’s EMEA senior manager for product solutions marketing.
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