Altera starts production shipments of highest density member of Stratix IV FPGA family

SAN JOSE, USA: Altera Corp. is shipping in production the highest density member of its 40-nm Stratix IV FPGA family.

Featuring 820K logic elements (LEs), the Stratix IV E EP4SE820 device is ideally suited for a variety of high-end applications that require high-density, high-performance and low-power FPGAs, including ASIC prototyping and emulation, wireless, wireline, military, computer and storage. With this announcement, the rollout of Altera's high-end 40-nm Stratix IV FPGA family is complete with all devices shipping in volume.

A variant of the Stratix IV FPGA family, Stratix IV E devices provide the unique combination of density and performance leadership along with innovative power-saving features, including Altera's proprietary Programmable Power Technology.

The Stratix IV E FPGA variant is comprised of four devices ranging in density from 230K up to 820K LEs. The resource-rich EP4SE820 device is the industry's highest density FPGA in production today, delivering up to 820K LEs, 23.1-Mb embedded memory and 960 18x18 multipliers.

Ideally suited for ASIC prototyping environments
Designing a leading-edge ASIC is an expensive and time-consuming operation today, making it imperative that ASIC designers get their design right the first time. The Stratix IV EP4SE820 FPGA gives ASIC-prototyping designers the ability to implement designs up to 15 million ASIC gates on a single FPGA, which helps to simplify board design and accelerate prototyping cycles.

To date, several vendors selected the EP4SE820 FPGA for their next-generation ASIC prototyping boards and systems, including The Dini Group, Iris Technologies and S2C. The high-density device is also integrated into GiDEL's family of FPGA-based high-performance computing (HPC) acceleration boards and ASIC prototyping systems.

"The need for higher density, higher performance and lower power in FPGA designs is a critical factor for customers when selecting the right FPGA," said Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of component product marketing at Altera. "By targeting all three of these areas with our Stratix IV E FPGA, we provide our customers with a resource-rich device that enables them to deliver greater product differentiation at a lower cost."