The Big Brother in the FPGA Industry Says That the Era of Heterogeneous Multi-core Processors Is Com

A new era of unlimited application expansion

The global FPGA market scale is about US $5 billion a year, Xilinx occupies almost half of the country, and the market share of the two giants is nearly 90%. According to the latest financial report data released by Xilinx, its fiscal year 2015 (April 2014 March 2015) achieved a revenue of $2.38 billion, almost the same as the previous year, and its net profit increased by 3% to $648 million. Among them, the sales of communication department (wired and wireless) and data center and other departments are still the main revenue markets of Xilinx, but decreased by 26% and 31% respectively month on month; The sales of broadcasting, consumer and automotive sectors and industrial, aviation and security sectors maintained a rapid growth trend, with a year-on-year increase of 13% and 6% respectively.

As a leading manufacturer, Xilinx has indeed led the most cutting-edge innovation in this field. The company is transforming from a traditional programmable logic company to an "all programmable" company through breakthroughs in products, tools and concepts, which means that various forms of hardware, software, digital and analog programmable technologies are created and integrated into its all programmable FPGA SOC and 3D IC.

Yang Fei, vice president of Xilinx global sales Asia Pacific, said: "the transformation has brought Xilinx into a new era, an era of unlimited expansion of FPGA applications." he pointed out that in addition to the fields already applied, such as Mars probe, robotic surgical system, wired and wireless network infrastructure, HD video camera and display, And industrial manufacturing and automation equipment. In the future, Xilinx all programmable devices can create a new generation of intelligent systems with real-time data and graphics analysis functions, intelligent connection control functions, more optimal utilization of scarce resources and higher security.

"In the future, these devices can also be applied to the software defined network (SDN) of cable telecom operators and data centers, the self-organizing network (son) of wireless infrastructure, the smart grid and wind turbine of renewable energy, the machine vision and control technology combined with M2M communication to promote the development of smart factories, and ultra-high definition (4K / 2K) Video infrastructure and driver assistance and augmented reality platforms for the new generation of intelligent vehicles, "he said.

For example, he pointed out that through the zynq-7000 all programmable SOC with dual arm A9 cores, Xilinx has contributed a new choice to the embedded industry and opened the door to the blue ocean of embedded applications; The industry's only ASIC level architecture ulstrascale and the more advanced 16nm ulstrascale architecture used by the mass-produced 20nm products are used to further accelerate the process of replacing ASIC / ASSP solutions.

In addition to products, more important is the innovation of tools and design methods, so that the programmable design traditionally realized only by hardware engineers can be used by software engineers and system engineers. "Vivado design tools and SDX (software defined Design Environment Series) make products without market restrictions and users without application barriers. Xilinx leads and will continue to expand with huge ecological partners, which is such a new and fully programmable world," he stressed.

The firepower is concentrated on the consumer electronics and intelligent industry. Lattice gives up catching up with the two giants

Different from Xilinx's full expansion of the application market, small-scale FPGA suppliers choose to give up catching up with the two giants, narrow the front, focus their firepower on the emerging and fast-growing market, and actively develop the consumer electronics and intelligent industrial markets.

In fiscal year 2014, lattice achieved a revenue of US $366.1 million, an increase of 10.1% compared with us $332.5 million in fiscal year 2013. Although the revenue from the application field has not achieved breakthrough growth, the company is still satisfied with the revenue growth of the whole market and application field. "We can see that the traditional industrial and communication infrastructure market has recovered, and the consumer electronics and mobile application customer base is also expanding. Our goal is to achieve revenue growth in all FPGA markets. We believe that we have become the global leader in the fast-growing mobile FPGA market," said David L. Rutledge, chief technology officer of lattice.

"FPGA has great market potential in consumer electronics and industrial applications. Recently, lattice CEO Darin billerbeck reiterated that we will continue to be committed to the consumer electronics market in the future. In particular, the newly launched ice40 Ultralite FPGA is designed for handheld devices, suitable for applications such as smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. It is also an ideal choice for industrial devices and scientific instruments, "Rutledge continued, "Consumer electronics and industrial applications attach great importance to low power consumption and small size (think of the Internet of things), and lattice's FPGA products provide attractive advantages over other solutions in the above fields."

Lattice has shown its urgency to actively develop the Internet of things market. Rutledge said: "The rise of the Internet of things brings more possibilities for the latest applications and devices that will be born every day. In order to meet the demand, we launched ice40 Ultralite in February 2015. Its target applications are consumer handheld devices, including but not limited to smart phones, tablets and wearable devices, which require interface / bridging, I / O expansion, lighting, biometrics and sensor based applications Applications. Industrial handheld devices such as bar code scanners and gas detectors are also targeted applications. From the perspective of competitive advantage, lattice is the market leader in small-size and low-power solutions. "

It is noteworthy that, unlike Xilinx's choice to replace ASIC / ASSP with heterogeneous processors, lattice's strategy is to be inclusive and inclusive. In March 2015, lattice acquired silicon image, a leader in the wired and wireless interconnection solution market. "Our focus in 2015 is to ensure that the merger of the two companies can make the company more strategic and serve customers throughout the product life cycle. This is very exciting because this merger can enable the company to make key adjustments faster than before and expand the company's product line to special standard products (ASSP) Interconnection solution. ASSP can not only highly complement FPGA products developed by lattice, but also meet customers' needs at different stages of the product life cycle, "Rutledge said excitedly, "In addition, Silicon Image Electronics is the core enterprise in formulating important industry standards such as HDMI, MHL and DVI. It is precisely because the development of industry standards is consistent with the development of most technologies and applications. Now lattice's future goal is undoubtedly to become a leader in the global mobile and consumer electronics market."