Date: 13/10/2011

Altera launched SoC FPGA chips with ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor

Altera Corporation has launched SoC FPGA chips, integrating 28-nm Cyclone V and Arria V FPGA fabric, a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor, error correcting code (ECC) protected memory controllers, peripherals and high-bandwidth interconnect into a single chip.

Altera's Cyclone V and Arria V SoC FPGAs feature a processor system with a dual-core 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor, NEON media processing engine, single/double-precision floating point unit, L1 and L2 caches, ECC-protected memory controllers, ECC-protected scratchpad memory and a wide range of commonly used peripherals. The processor system can deliver 4,000 DMIPS peak performance for less than 1.8 watts. The processor system and FPGA fabric are powered independently and can be configured and booted in any order. Once in operation, the FPGA portion can be powered down as needed to conserve system power.

The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor system and FPGA are interconnected by high throughput data paths, providing over 125-Gbps peak bandwidth with integrated data coherency. This level of performance is not possible in two-chip solutions. An integrated single-chip SoC FPGA allows board designers to eliminate the external I/O paths between a processor and an FPGA, providing significant system power savings.

SoC FPGA silicon is expected in the second half of 2012. Altera's SoC FPGA pricing starts at less than $15 in high volumes. For more information about Altera's SoC FPGAs, visit www.altera.com/socfpga.

Xilinx has also launched a similar product in March 2011, the family from Xilinx is called Zynq. To know more on Zynq, visit www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/epp/zynq-7000/