(iTers News) - Progressively smaller form factors, higher integration of more functionality, lower power consumption are unstoppable trend in the wearable device as well as smartphone markets. To keep up, Lattice Semiconductor added a new breakthrough device to its iCE FPGA device family –iCE40 UltraLight.

 

Dubbed as the world’s smallest form factor FPGA device, the new chip measures 1.4mm x 1.4mm x 0.45mm, 60% smaller than the size of competitors'.   

 

It consumes 30% less power than competitors’, too, according to Lattice, sipping just 35 micro amperes, but comes embedded with a massively wealth of hardened IPs, boasting 5 times more integration than competitors.  

 

Those hardened IPs include current sinks, two programmable embedded i2C interfaces, embedded memory, and two oscillators, just to name a few. On the contrary, competitors’ products have just one i2C and one oscillator.

 

TIM WANG_Sr.Product Marketing Manager_LATTICE SEMICONDUCTOR

For example, this single chip can single handedly does with IR remote control. But, its competitor does that function with two discrete chips – one for IR remote control and the other for RGB LED driver, consuming 4 times more PCB spaces and more of power.     

 

“Why power is so important? Pedometers, wearable devices, and always-on applications, those devices typically require very, very low power, because they need to be constantly running all the time, Tim Wang, senior product marketing manager with Lattice Semiconductor.

 

Added he, “Wearable devices are getting very, very popular. Always-on applications are getting popular, too, Such as pedometer and voice input, those features are getting more and more popular.  We see market continue pushing for high integration of products. They want very small for, factor devices and put a lot of features in it. We see a lot of features used to be in high end phones migrate into the middle-end phone. So, there are great pressures on cost solutions.”

 

The iCE40 UltraLight FPGA chip is a successor to a predecessor iCE40 Ultra FPGA device, but is not designed to replace, compete against it, but address  completely different market applications like wearable devices. Unlike the iCE40 Light that comes in three density options -1K, 2K, and 3.5K, it has two density options -1K and 640 bytes of memory.

 

LATTICE SEMICONDUCTOR_iCE40 UltraLite FPGA_20150122 seoul (109)

“Wearable devices want very small form factor and very low power. This kind of density is sufficient to support this kind of applications,” stressed Tim Wang.

 

On top of that, it is programmable so that it is flexible enough to support customers’ many different designs and many different system requirements.

 

For example, it can support RGB lighting control, fingertip-based user identification, remote control, pedometer, barcode emulation, and activity monitoring.

 

RGB LED control is to simulate multi-color breathing effects for notification, while white LED control is to enable a flashlight function on smartphones. It also supports motion gesture capability that reduces the need to use the touch screen to awaken devices and launch applications.

“Don’t forget that it is a FPGA chip.  At the end of the day, customers can still have new idea and they want new requirements, we can always program it to meet the requirements,” he added.      

The applications do not stop there. It can address industrial and medical applications which require small package size and low power consumption

 

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