Lattice announces first low cost FPGA with Serial RapidIO 2.1 support

HILLSBORO, USA: Lattice Semiconductor Corp. and Praesum Communications announced the availability of the Serial RapidIO 2.1 endpoint soft IP core for the LatticeECP3 FPGA family.

The core supports 1x, 2x and 4x lane configurations at up to 3.125Gbps lane speeds, offering the lowest cost, lowest power programmable SRIO solution in the industry. Lattice also announced that it has licensed this IP core from Praesum and has full rights to use and sub-license the Serial RapidIO IP core.

RapidIO has won broad acceptance in wireless infrastructure applications, where it is used as a primary interconnect for DSP clusters in baseband processing. In the past, vendors had to rely on expensive, premium FPGAs for these applications.

However, the combination of the Serial RapidIO 2.1 core and the LatticeECP3 FPGA will now allow customers to develop low-power infrastructure solutions for 3G, LTE and WiMAX without sacrificing performance or cost. The Serial RapidIO 2.1 core and other Lattice IP cores such as low latency CPRI and GbE/SGMII comprise a comprehensive IP suite in support of wireless infrastructure applications.

"We are pleased to have been selected to provide RapidIO 2.1 endpoint IP for the Lattice low cost ECP3 FPGA. As the only supplier of fully compliant RapidIO 2.1 IP, Praesum's partnership with Lattice will help to accelerate deployment of this next generation technology in high performance signal processing applications. When combined with our RapidIO 2.1 switching IP, the endpoint IP for the LatticeECP3 FPGA represents a complete solution for wireless infrastructure equipment vendors," said Kent Dahlgren, Praesum's CEO.

"Our partnership with Praesum has yielded the first programmable Serial RapidIO 2.1 endpoint solution, and an interoperability ecosystem that will dramatically reduce cost and power for wireless infrastructure manufacturers," said Shakeel Peera, Lattice's Director of Marketing for SRAM FPGAs.