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Renesas enters the FPGA business

Renesas enters the FPGA business

Business news |
By Nick Flaherty



Renesas Electronics is entering the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) market with a line of very low-cost, very low-power devices.

The ForgeFPGA family was developed by the team that developed the GreenPak configurable technology at Silego Technology and acquired by Dialog Semiconductor who are now at Renesas.

The first chips will have 1K and 2K Look Up Tables (LUTs) with under 5,000 gates and cost $0.50. The devices will also be low standby power, typically 20uA, half that of other devices. While this won’t challenge Xilinx and Intel at the high end, it will take on low power devices from Lattice Semiconductor built on FD SOI process as well as FPGAs from Microchip and Quicklogic.   

Users will be able to download the development software at no cost and with no license fees. The software offers two development modes to accommodate both new and experienced FPGA developers: a macrocell mode that uses a schematic capture development flow, and an HDL mode that provides a familiar Verilog environment for experienced FPGA designers.

“It’s exciting to see an established semiconductor vendor like Renesas tackling a long-ignored portion of the FPGA market: small, low-cost FPGAs that sip microwatts in standby mode,” said Steve Leibson, Principal Analyst, TIRIAS Research. “Having scooped up programmable device maker Silego with its acquisition of Dialog earlier this year, Renesas seems determined to repeat Silego’s previous success with its ultra-low-end GreenPAK line of programmable mixed-signal devices and super-simple design tools, this time in a low-end FPGA line that will appeal to many companies who just need a bit of programmable logic – a thousand gates or so – to get the job done in myriad products including billions of embedded sensors and IoT devices.”

“We are eager to extend our leadership in the small, low-cost, programmable market into FPGAs,” said Davin Lee, Vice President of the Mixed-Signal Division in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “We know from experience and from direct conversations that these devices will appeal to companies large and small in numerous markets around the world.”

Renesas is preparing several reference designs with the ForgeFPGA devices and suppring analog and digital devices. Engineering samples are available now along with beta design software and a prototype development kit.

The first ForgeFPGA device, the 1K LUT offering, is expected to be available in production quantities in Q2 2022.

www.dialog-semiconductor.com/products/greenpak/low-power-low-cost-forgefpga 

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