Mid-range FPGA will become a new "niche" market

Looking through the history of FPGAs, you will find that IBM, Toshiba, Samsung Electronics, Motorola and Philips have not successfully penetrated the FPGA chip market for more than 10 years, even after Intel bought Altera for $16.7 billion. Formally involved in this market. The most important reason is that the existing industry has built a towering patent wall with nearly 9,000 patents. It is conceivable for the latecomers to divide the obstacles and challenges facing the global FPGA chip market.

In the only remaining Xilinx, Altera, Lattice and Microsemi , the route is also clear: on the one hand, occupying the high-end market, Xilinx and Intel PSG focus on technology, spelling technology, FPGA Often using the most advanced technology and deep tapping the potential of the process, we have begun to adopt the most advanced 1Xnm or even the following processes. And, because of the more expensive and advanced technology, the low-end FPGAs are typically configured through waterfall-style cropping logic cells. On the other hand, Lattice and Microsemi are taking the low-end FPGA route. Lattice is occupying the consumer electronics and IoT market with small-sized, low-power, low-cost FPGAs. The iCE40 series is the only uWatt in the world. FPGA. Through the acquisition of Actel, Microsemi has accumulated IGLOO and ProASIC3 reprogrammable non-volatile product lines starting at 30KLE, and SmartFusion2 and IGLOO2 device FPGAs starting with 150K LE 5G transceivers.

With the evolution of the market and the changes in positioning, these manufacturers are also reviving in a new round of competition. “With the development of communication, data center and industry 4.0, the bandwidth demand for 1G to 40G is increasing, which is an ideal application field for mid-range FPGAs, but it also proposes low cost, low power consumption, security and reliability. Demand.” Shakeel Peera, senior product line marketing director of Microsemi's FPGA System-on-Chip product group, told reporters.

From the market point of view, the mid-range FPGA will become a new "niche" market. From the current product point of view, there is also enough room for growth imagination. Shakeel Peera analyzes that transceivers and power costs are a premium when selecting midrange devices. Xilinx and Intel PSG will give priority to the introduction of high-end products with advanced technology, and will amortize the cost. Generally, they will mass-produce low-end products through the top-down “cutting” of the waterfall, so they will be in terms of cost and power consumption. There is a "compromise" that leads to loss of efficiency and cost. While LatTIce focuses on consumer electronics, transceiver performance is difficult to rely on 10G, and if you enter the mid-end market, you need to adopt 28nm process, which requires a lot of investment, which is a little difficult for Lattice.