With the trend toward increasingly complex system control architectures, the lack of 3.3V I/O support in modern CPU and SoC designs necessitates solutions. Simplified system design and integration are becoming increasingly essential, and Lattice's solutions addressing this need are being presented.

Lattice Semiconductor announced at an online press conference on the 31st that it is expanding its portfolio in the control FPGA field and solution stack. Lattice announced the introduction of the Lattice MachXO5™-NX family, the fifth device based on the Lattice Nexus platform, and an ORAN solution stack addressing the rapidly emerging ORAN market.

MachXO5-NX, Advanced Features, Security, Power Efficiency, and Stability↑

"The demand for system monitoring and reliability in security modules has been rapidly increasing."

“Discrete module architectures are emerging due to specialized workloads that require enhanced control solutions,” said Lee Ki-hoon, Vice President of Lattice Semiconductor. “Modern CPUs and SoCs lack the robust 3.3VI/O signaling support needed to communicate with many other devices in a system.” He emphasized that the MachXO5-NX FPGA provides the optimal combination of advanced features, security, power efficiency, and reliability to accelerate time to market.

MachXO5-NX FPGAs feature enhanced logic and memory resources, 3.3V VI/O support, and a suite of security features, enabling advanced security control implementations. Designed to enable enhanced system monitoring and control in server computing, communications, industrial, and automotive markets, MachXO5-NX FPGAs deliver power efficiency and reliability.

To address increasingly complex design trends, we also offer solutions that maximize utilization of resources. Embedded memory minimizes the need for external memory, reducing design footprint and providing dedicated user flash memory for storing mission-critical data and parameters.

The vice president emphasized improved power consumption and stability with the Lattice Nexus platform. He said, “The low-power characteristics extend battery life and simplify system thermal management, reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the system,” and “It also shows a 100-fold lower soft error rate (SER), improving system reliability in safety-critical applications.”

In particular, he highlighted the challenges faced by the latest CPU and SoC products, namely, their inability to sufficiently support 3.3VI/O signal transmission required to communicate with many other peripheral devices in the system, and highlighted the capabilities of the MachXO5-NX FPGA to address this issue.

The device features up to 300 general-purpose I/Os that support boot-time priority I/O configuration, and additional features such as 1.25 Gbps SGMII, default pull-down, hot socket, and programmable slew rate to simplify board design, it said.

Open RAN (ORAN), the future food source: "Security solutions are crucial."
According to Kenneth Research, the global ORAN market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 85% from 2020 to 2028, driven by the rapid adoption of 5G technology, to reach a market size of $22 billion by 2028.

To keep pace with this growth, the telecommunications industry needs flexibility, innovation, and cost reduction. As a driving force, ORAN is increasingly embracing fragmentation and openness. This open environment requires: secure and safe communications; tight synchronization between various components; and efficiency through low-power hardware acceleration.

Accordingly, Lattice, which has a portfolio including low-power edge AI, low-power embedded vision, and factory automation acceleration, has newly introduced the 'ORAN Deployment Support' solution, the fifth in its solution stack series.

The Lattice ORAN solution stack focuses on control data security. It features robust zero-trust security, tight synchronization for flexible fronthaul, and acceleration with low power and reliability.

CEO Yoon said, “As the ORAN market develops, not only traditional telecommunications manufacturers but also new telecommunications manufacturers may emerge,” and added, “As market activation is expected, security issues could become more critical.”