Lattice Certus-NX FPGAs Optimized for Automotive Applications
August 26, 2021
News
Lattice Semiconductor expanded its portfolio of automotive products with the announcement of versions of the Lattice Certus-NX FPGA family optimized for infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and safety-focused applications.
Built on the Lattice Nexus platform, these new Certus-NX devices combine automotive-grade features with I/O density, power efficiency, small size, reliability, instant-on performance, and support for PCI Express (PCIe) and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
The latest Certus-NX FPGAs are ideal for automotive applications like motor control, LED control in in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, in-vehicle networking (IVN), and sensor data co-processing in ADAS applications.
Per the company, the key features of Certus-NX FPGAs include:
- Low power consumption – Up to 4X lower power use than similar FPGAs, with a programmable back bias that enables user-selectable high performance or low power operating modes, depending on the needs of the application.
- Small form factor – Up to 3X smaller with up to 2X the I/O density per mm2 in comparison to similar competing FPGAs.
- Instant-on performance – Ultra-fast device configuration from SPI memory up to 12X faster than similar competing FPGAs, with individual I/Os able to configure in just 3 ms, and full-device startup in only 8-14 ms, depending on device capacity.
- Robust I/O interfacing capability – Lattice’s Certus-NX I/O IP library includes:
o 1.5 Gbps differential I/O with performance up to 70 percent higher than competing FPGAs.
o 5 Gbps PCIe, 1.5 Gbps SGMII, and 1066 Mbps DDR3.
- Automotive certification and high reliability – Certus-NX FPGAs are AEC-Q100 qualified and provide up to 100X better soft-error rate (SER) performance than similar FPGAs.
- Authentication and encryption – To protect bitstreams against unauthorized access, Certus-NX FPGAs support AES-256 encryption with ECDSA; they are currently the smallest FPGAs on the market to support ECDSA.
- Ease of use/design – Lattice Radiant and Lattice Propel software tools help simplify and accelerate automotive system design. Certus-NX FPGAs are also supported by the Lattice mVision and Lattice sensAI solution stacks so designers can leverage the stacks’ modular hardware platforms, reference designs, neural network IP cores, and custom design services to accelerate automotive vision system design.
Automotive-grade versions of Certus-NX FPGAs are now sampling with select customers. For more information about the Lattice technologies mentioned above, visit:
- www.latticesemi.com/Certus-NX
- www.latticesemi.com/LatticeNexus
- www.latticesemi.com/LatticeRadiant
- www.latticesemi.com/Propel
- www.latticesemi.com/mVision
- www.latticesemi.com/sensAI
For more information, visit www.latticesemi.com.
Tiera Oliver is the assistant managing editor at Embedded Computing Design. She is responsible for web content editing, product news, and story development. She also manages, edits, and develops content for ECD podcasts, including Embedded Insiders.
She utilizes her expertise in journalism and content management to oversee editorial content, coordinate with editors, and ensure high-quality output across web, print, and multimedia platforms. She manages diverse projects, assists in the production of digital magazines, and hosts company podcasts by conducting in-depth interviews with industry leaders to deliver engaging and insightful discussions.
Tiera attended Northern Arizona University, where she received her bachelor's in journalism and political science. She was also a news reporter for the student-led newspaper, The Lumberjack.
