Altera is a long-standing leader in the complex programmable logic device (CPLD) market. With over 10 000 CPLD users annually, more than 350 million units shipped worldwide, and $4 bn in cumulative sales, the company's MAX brand has been synonymous with CPLDs since the introduction of its MAX 5000 family in 1988. In March, Altera announced a 'new standard for the industry' with the launch of its MAX II family, which employs a radical new version of the CPLD architecture.
In stark contrast to traditional CPLDs, MAX II devices are built on a 0,18 μm embedded flash process based on a look-up table (LUT) architecture. Altera says that as a result, the new family is half the cost, one-tenth the power, four times the density, and twice the performance of its predecessor.
"Our customers are in search of an alternative to small and inflexible ASICs and ASSPs," said Erik Cleage, Altera's senior vice president of marketing. "This presented a giant opportunity to further the value proposition of CPLDs."
As a result of direct input from more than 500 customers around the globe, Altera set aggressive goals for the new MAX II family. Some of their expectations were obvious: the new chip had to be faster, smaller, lower cost, less power hungry, and much higher in density.
"What was not obvious was how to derive significant improvements from 15-year-old CPLD technology; the macrocell architecture is not scalable beyond 0,22 μm," said Cleage.
To meet the basic needs of today's CPLD users and to deliver the expanded CPLD feature set they required, Altera used a non-volatile, embedded flash process and adapted the LUT architecture from its highly successful FPGA families. As a result, the new devices are able to deliver twice the performance and quadruple the density at a tenth of the power consumption of previous MAX generations.
Software support for the MAX II family is included in the Quartus II design tool. Experienced MAX users will find the same, familiar user interface as MAX+PLUS II software, but will now have access to a broader range of silicon solutions - from CPLDs to FPGAs - all within the same environment.
Webinar: Game-changing Matter standard EBV Electrolink
Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT
Join Infineon for an exclusive one-hour webinar with EBV Elektronik, exploring the groundbreaking Matter standard, and its profound implications for the future of smart homes.
Read more...General-purpose MCU with RISC-V architecture EBV Electrolink
DSP, Micros & Memory
Renesas has released a general-purpose MCU to enhance its existing RISC-V portfolio, and this is its first MCU using a RISC-V core developed internally at the company.
Read more...AI-native IoT platform launched EBV Electrolink
AI & ML
These highly-integrated Linux and Android SoCs from Synaptics are optimised for consumer, enterprise, and industrial applications and deliver an ‘out-of-the-box’ edge AI experience.
Read more...Serial SRAM up to 4 MB EBV Electrolink
DSP, Micros & Memory
The chips are designed to provide a lower-cost alternative to traditional parallel SRAM products, and include optional battery backup switchover circuitry in the SRAM memory to retain data on power loss.
Read more...Microchip expands its mSiC solutions EBV Electrolink
Power Electronics / Power Management
The highly integrated 3,3 kV XIFM plug-and-play digital gate driver is designed to work out-of-the-box with high-voltage SiC-based power modules to simplify and speed system integration.
Read more...Powering up the intelligent edge EBV Electrolink
DSP, Micros & Memory
STMicroelectronics is releasing new devices from the second generation of its industrial microprocessors (MPUs), the STM32MP2 series, to drive future progress in smart factories, smart healthcare, smart buildings, and smart infrastructure.
Read more...Flash for AI EBV Electrolink
AI & ML
SCM offers a midway latency point between DRAM and SSDs, and when coupled with the introduction of CXL, low-latency flash, such as XL-FLASH, is well-positioned to deliver improvements in price, system performance, and power consumption to everything from servers to edge devices deploying the power of AI.
Read more...UFS Ver. 4.0 embedded Flash memory devices EBV Electrolink
Computer/Embedded Technology
KIOXIA Europe has announced sampling of the industry’s first Universal Flash Storage (UFS) version 4.0 embedded Flash memory devices designed for automotive applications.
Read more...InnoSwitch5 Offline Flyback Switcher IC EBV Electrolink
Power Electronics / Power Management
ero-voltage switching (ZVS) flyback topology and advanced SR FET control enable 95% efficiency, together with reduced power supply size and component count.
Read more...IGBT power module EBV Electrolink
Power Electronics / Power Management
The company has now released its new half-bridge IGBT power modules offered in its redesigned INT-A-PAK package.
printer friendly version