Lattice Semiconductor initially carved itself a niche in the FPGA market by focusing on low-power devices for tight-footprint applications, such as industrial automation. While it has made efforts to broaden its FPGA families to target other application requirements it continues to try to push the limits of what can be done to reduce FPGA form factors and power to help conserve battery life in sensors and similar devices.
The latest evidence of that effort is Lattice’s most recent announcement, in which it unveiled new, logic-optimized Lattice Certus-NX FPGA, including the Certus-NX-28 and Certus-NX-09, which the company said achieve up to 4x lower power than some competing FPGAs in a form factor that is up to 3x smaller than those other devices, among other claims (see news release for details). Lattice told Fierce Electronics via email that the new devices are available for shipping and being sampled to customers that “will begin testing them on boards shortly.”
The Lattice news comes as the FPGA market has begun to steadily grow with new demand coming from sectors like the automotive industry, where they are used in ADAS-related applications, and the communications industry. Research firm Yole Group said earlier this year that FPGA revenue is tracking toward exceeding $15 billion by 2029, up from about $8.6 billion last year.
Intel has said it sees an even larger payday for programmable devices like FPGAs–a potential “$55-billion-plus market”--that has led the company to spin off its Programmable Solutions Group to chase that opportunity. In this newly dynamic market, companies like Intel and AMD are looking to exploit every possible application, and that includes the lower-power portion of the market that companies like Lattice and Microchip have been mining. For example, AMD recently unveiled its own low-power FPGAs.
As this competitive dynamic has developed, Lattice has seen its financial performance weaken, with revenue for the first quarter of this year coming in more than 23% lower than the same quarter a year earlier. The company is scheduled to report second quarter 2024 earnings on July 29.
Lattice recognizes how contested the FPGA market has become, but also believes it can keep innovating into new territory. “The entire semiconductor ecosystem is incentivized to optimize power and small form factor in every category of applications that FPGAs service,” the company stated via email. “We continually monitor and evaluate our options and where it makes sense and we don’t foresee any set timeframe where we hit a barrier in driving innovation in power and small form factor FPGAs.”
Dan Mansur, Corporate Vice President, Product Marketing, Lattice Semiconductor, added in a statement, “Lattice is committed to delivering continued innovation in small, low power FPGAs to empower our customers with optimized solutions for space-constrained applications ranging from sensor interfacing to co-processing to low power AI. We’re excited to expand our Nexus-based small FPGA offerings by adding more migratable logic and package options including 0.8 mm pitch, ideal for Industrial applications.”
For what it’s worth, Lattice partners ABB and SICK AG voiced their support in statements included in the Lattice news release.
“We are happy to see Lattice introduce new Certus-NX devices offering more low power, small footprint and migration options to the Industrial applications requiring high reliability,” said Alberto Martin-Consuegra, VP Operations & Quality, ABB Process Automation.
Reinhard Heizmann, Head of Distance Sensors R&D, Sensing Efficiency at SICK AG, said “With the new Lattice Certus-NX devices, we are able to optimize the right memory / LUT [luminescence sensor] footprint, low power density, small packages, and migration options required for our sensors.”