Designing systems for the intelligent edge is more challenging than ever. As the rapidly changing business environment shrinks market opportunities and increases the cost and risk of new designs, thermal management and reliability must be prioritized, while also considering heightened security requirements from the beginning to the end of the system.

Meeting these simultaneous demands requires immediate knowledge of specialized technologies and vertical market expertise.

Microchip Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MCHP) today announced the addition of nine new technology and application-specific solution stacks to help developers who are pressed for time to acquire everything they need to design intelligent edge systems.

This stack spans a wide range of applications, including industrial edge computing, smart embedded vision, and edge communications, and expands Microchip's collection of mid-range FPGAs and systems-on-chip (SoCs) that it supports.

While previous products have only provided basic support for a broad range of applications, the PolarFire FPGA Intelligent Edge solution stack is highly customized to the needs of specific technologies and vertical markets, and includes detailed intellectual property (IP) capabilities, reference designs, development kits with sample designs, application notes, and demo guides.

Applications supported by Microchip’s new PolarFire FPGA and SoC Intelligent Edge solutions and stacks include smart embedded vision (H.264 compression, HDMI, serial digital interfaces, CoaXpress, etc.), industrial edge (motor control, OPC/UA), and edge communications (software defined radio, USXGMII, Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP+) optical modules, 5G ORAN).

Shaquille P., FPGA Strategy Division, Microchip“Microchip is making it easier than ever to create industry-leading products in industrial and communications designs,” said Shakeel Peera, vice president of product management. “Our Intelligent Edge is gaining significant attention from leading system developers because they can fully leverage the exceptional power efficiency, security and reliability of PolarFire FPGAs.”

“Size, weight and power consumption are critical considerations when designing thermal imaging systems,” said Federic Aubrun, chief commercial officer at Genix. “Microchip’s SmartFusion and PolarFire FPGAs, both current and next-generation, offer the best balance of small form factor, power efficiency and processing resources in an ultra-low-power design.”

“We use PolarFire FPGAs because of their small footprint and energy efficiency,” said Michael Yampolsky, founder and CEO of Kaya Instruments. “PolarFire FPGAs allow us to leverage the latest CMOS sensor technology to deliver high-performance camera features like excellent dynamic range, high image quality, and low noise in a very small footprint.”

Meanwhile, Microchip's expansion of its solution stack collection follows its June announcement of the Open Platform Communications/Unified Architecture (OPC/UA) Industrial Edge Stack and extensive resources to support customers transitioning to PolarFire FPGAs and SoCs.