With low cost FPGAs being designed into mobile handsets, chip firms believe it is now time for FPGAs to enter the volume car market with designs in low and mid-range vehicles.

Lattice Semiconductor has introduced a range of AEC-Q100-certified automotive FPGAs in its ECP3 family.

With the proliferation of imaging sensors in cars, which is now moving to mid-range volume models, Lattice sees an opportunity to design in its FPGAs for image processing and interface control.

The LA-LatticeECP3 FPGAs will support serdes channels for high speed serial data buses. LVDS, MIPI CSI2 and HDMI are all now commonly used in cars.

There are six banks of configurable I/O and four 3Gbit/s serdes. This is a power optimized serdes function.

“It draws 110mW per serdes channel,” said Gordon Hands, director of marketing at Lattice, “this is half of the power of comparable multi-protocol serdes.”

There is on-chip memory, programmable DDR3 memory interfaces and up to 35k look-up tables (LUTS).

Hands believes the use of traditionally cost and power prohibitive FPGAs in cars is being driven by shortening development cycles as well as the need for processing performance.

“These devices are also hitting the right price points for the automotive market,” said Hands.

These are sub-$6 FPGAs in 50k unit quantities.

Package size is 10mm x 10mm.

Lattice is also offering an HDR-60 video camera development kit.

One likely application is the replacement of wing rear-view mirrors with imaging systems. “This has the potential to improve automobile aerodynamics to increase fuel efficiency,” said Hands.

Lattice is offering 17k LUT and 35k LUT-capacity versions of LA-LatticeECP3 FPGAs in BGA packages ranging from 256 balls to 484 balls.

By: DocMemory
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