News and New Products

Low-power FPGAs target portable market

By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- EDN, 11/7/2005

QuickLogic has introduced a new low-power FPGA (field programmable gate array) family, claiming that the devices boast 10 µA of static power consumption, 15 mA of active power consumption, and 10 µA of dynamic power consumption.

Years ago, QuickLogic conceded the high-capacity, high-performance FPGA market to Xilinx and Altera. Since then, the company has been pushing the low-power properties of its ViaLink antifuse-interconnect architecture as a main selling point for its devices. To further capitalize on this, QuickLogic introduced its Eclipse II (E-II) low-power CPLD (complex programmable-logic device) family in 2003, at a time when low power was still a third-order effect. Now the company is offering an even lower-power family at the same time that power consumption has become a first-order concern.

Whereas most FPGAs, because of leakage, are not readily applicable to wireless applications, the new PolarPro family squarely targets portable applications, according to Thomas Olsner, product manager at QuickLogic. "It is a full-featured architecture with clock managers and clock networks," Olsner said. "It can address almost any logic requirement in power-sensitive applications."

The family, which features a dual-port SRAM architecture, won't replace the microprocessor SOCs (systems on chips) and ASSPs (application specific standard processors) in cell phones, for example, Olsner said. But with a key feature called VLP (very low power) standby mode, the devices can be used as gatekeepers to power down power-hungry functions, such as embedded hard-disk drives, when they are not being used by a system.

VLP significantly reduces dynamic power, Olsner said. Where dynamic power consumption was 11 mA in E-II, it is 10 µA in PolarPro, he said. "That's 1000 times lower than flash-based FPGAs and 10,000 times lower than SRAM-based FPGAs," he added.

"In VLP mode we retain I/O and register values, so you can turn the device on and off and it will remember what it was doing," Olsner said. "We use ViaLink programmable interconnect, which is an instant-on technology and a metal-to-metal programmable interconnect that requires no external configuration. So when you combine the two you turn on and off the device almost instantaneously, and it will remember what it was doing."

PolarPro also has lower static power than the E-II family. Whereas E-II devices feature static power of 100 µA, PolarPro has static power consumption of 10 µA. PolarPro has the same active power consumption as the E-II family.

Olsner claims PolarPro could potentially extend the video playback time of a product like PalmOne's LifeDrive from 2.5 to 10.8 hours and potentially extend the playback time of a product like iRiver's PMC-120 from 5 to 14.5 hours.

In addition to their low-power modes, the devices also have features typical of newer high end devices. The devices feature 4-LUT configuration but can be custom configured with up to 13 inputs. They also have advanced bus interfaces for DDR, on-chip RAM, and asynchronous FIFO controllers.

The company's QuickWorks software supports the devices, which range in size from 50,000 gates to 1 million gates. The first device, the 100,000-gate QL1P100, will start sampling in December and will cost $2.95 in high volume, according to the company. QuickLogic expects other members of the family to sample during 2006. The devices are offered in TFBGA and TQFP packaging for space-constrained applications and in PQFP and FBGA form for larger applications.