Lattice Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: LSCC), the low power programmable leader, today announced the first FPGA developed on its new Lattice Nexus™ FPGA platform, CrossLink-NX™. This new FPGA provides the low power, small form factor, reliability, and performance that developers need to create innovative embedded vision and AI solutions for communications, compute, industrial, automotive, and consumer systems.
 
According to Patrick Moorhead, president and founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, “Technology trends like 5G connectivity, cloud-based analytics, factory automation and the smart home are driving demand for embedded vision solutions that support machine learning. However, the data latency, cost and privacy issues associated with cloud-based ML analytics have sparked interest among developers in moving more data processing from the cloud to the Edge. But doing so requires OEMs have access to Edge AI/ML inferencing solutions that offer high performance data processing, low power operation, and a small form factor.”
 
FPGAs are a compelling hardware platform for embedded vision and AI applications, as they perform functions in parallel. This parallel architecture significantly accelerates certain processing workloads, including data inferencing.
 
“Embedded vision systems are growing in complexity; many systems today use multiple image sensors, displays and cameras. Implementing such systems at the Edge, where device size and power consumption are critical, adds even more design complexity,” said Bill Pu, Co-Founder and President, Leopard Imaging. “With their very low power consumption, small size, high-performance interfaces, and robust software and IP library, Lattice CrossLink-NX FPGAs let us quickly and easily develop different video signal bridging, aggregation and splitting applications for our industrial and automotive customers using just one device, saving us significant development time and resources.”
 
The CrossLink-NX family was designed using the new Lattice Nexus platform, which combines a 28 nm FD-SOI manufacturing process with a new, Lattice-designed, FPGA fabric architecture optimized for low power operation in a small form factor.

“Not only does CrossLink-NX lead in power consumption, form factor, reliability and performance in comparison to similar competing FPGAs, it is also supported by a robust library of design software, IP blocks and application reference designs,” said Gordon Hands, Director of Product Marketing, Lattice Semiconductor. “These make it quick and easy for developers to integrate CrossLink-NX FPGAs into new or existing Edge designs.”