Lattice Announces Nexus Platform and Radiant 2.0
CrossLink-NX supports 170-bit memory per logic cell
Developed with Samsung Electronics' 28nm FD-SOI technology


On the 11th, Lattice Semiconductor announced its new low-power FPGA platform, 'Lattice Nexus,' and the first device based on it, 'CrossLink-NX.'

The Lattice Nexus platform is designed for embedded developers looking to implement AI applications at the edge and was developed using Samsung Electronics' 28nm FD-SOI (Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator) process technology. This technology offers 50% less transistor leakage than bulk CMOS. With this, Lattice has become Samsung Electronics Foundry's first FPGA customer.

It also released 'Lattice Radiant 2.0', a software tool for FPGA design. Because the design flow, from the design planning stage to IP porting, implementation, bitstream generation, and downloading bitstreams to the FPGA, is automated, even FPGA inexperienced developers can easily develop.


CrossLink-NX consumes 75% less power than equivalent FPGAs
CrossLink-NX, the first FPGA device based on the Nexus platform, features low power, a small form factor, reliability, and performance characteristics required for developing AI solutions for embedded vision systems as well as communications, computing, industrial, automotive, and consumer systems.

Compared to competing FPGA products in the same class, it consumes up to 75% less power and has a Soft Error Rate (SER) up to 100 times lower. It also supports various high-speed I/O including MIPI, PCIe, and DDR3 memory.

CrossLink-NX also supports instant-on functionality to support industrial applications where long system boot times are critical. I/O configuration is possible within 3ms, and full device configuration is possible within 15ms.

To enable efficient AI inference on edge devices, it supports 170 bits of memory per logic cell, which is twice as much as the previous generation device. Available in a 6×6mm form factor, CrossLink-NX is up to 1/10 the size of competing FPGA products in its class.

Lattice provides not only Radiant 2.0 but also IP core libraries such as MIPI D-PHY, PCIe, SGMII, and OpenLDI, as well as demo materials for common embedded vision applications such as 4:1 image sensor aggregation.

"FPGAs support the power-efficient performance required by new technologies such as AI inference at the edge and sensor management," said Yign Jen Chen, Director of Business Development for Lattice Asia Pacific. "The Lattice Nexus platform, which enhances the parallel processing and reprogramming capabilities of FPGAs, will accelerate Lattice's future product launch speed."

He added, “The Lattice Nexus platform provides an easy-to-use solution stack targeting rapidly growing core applications,” and “supports users unfamiliar with FPGA design to easily and quickly develop their own systems.”