Altera announces Cyclone III LS FPGAs

SAN JOSE, USA: Expanding its leadership position in low-power solutions, Altera Corp. today announced a new low-power FPGA family with security features.

The Altera Cyclone III LS FPGAs offer the highest logic, memory, and DSP density per board area. These devices are the lowest power FPGAs at less than 0.25W of static power for 200K logic elements (LEs). The Cyclone III LS FPGAs, which are shipping now, target power and board-space-sensitive applications in all market segments including military and industrial.

The security features of the Cyclone III LS FPGA include a comprehensive information-assurance design suite that offers anti-tamper, design-security and design-separation capabilities.

To protect highly sensitive information, the Cyclone III LS FPGAs' anti-tamper features include JTAG port protection, tamper monitoring, and cyclical redundancy check (CRC). Offering another layer of protection, these devices feature a proven industry-standard AES 256-bit encryption key for design security.

Where size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements are crucial, the design-separation feature of the Cyclone III LS FPGA enables high-assurance and industrial-safety applications in a single chip through logic, routing and I/O bank separation.

"The secret to the Cyclone series’ success has been a strong focus on customer applications, which allows Altera to supply the right mix of low power, high functionality, and small form-factor solutions," said Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of component product marketing at Altera.

"The introduction of the Cyclone III LS devices extends Altera’s low-power leadership and specifically addresses the security needs that are paramount for the military and industrial markets. We're offering a complete solution that protects against IP theft and tampering."

Cyclone III LS FPGAs allow a single-chip solution for next-generation military applications such as software-defined radio (SDR), crypto-subsystems, and crypto modernization equipment where long battery life, density at the lowest power, and small board space are required.

The additional security features of the Cyclone III LS FPGAs give designers of secure communications applications the assurance that their information will be protected with anti-tamper technology.

Unique features of the Cyclone III LS FPGA also provide the optimal solution for industrial applications, specifically motion control, Industrial Ethernet, and industrial safety. Using the design-separation feature lowers system power and increases integration while offering design redundancy for safety-critical applications.

Cyclone III LS devices are shipping now. All of the devices will be supported in the Quartus II software version 9.0 SP2.