Altera expands Cyclone IV FPGA series

BANGALORE, INDIA: Altera, a provider of programmable logic solutions to the semiconductor industry, announced on Tuesday that it is extending its transceiver portfolio of Cyclone FPGA with the launch of Cyclone IV FPGAs in India.

Responding to increased low-cost bandwidth needs driven by the demand for mobile video, voice, and data access, and the hunger for high-quality 3D images, the new Cyclone IV FPGA family adds support for mainstream serial protocols while offering an optimal balance of low cost, low power and a rich supply of logic, memory and DSP capabilities.

“The key factor today is low cost and low power. We have designed our new product keeping all the market requirements in mind,” said Gangatharan Gopal, country manager, India, Altera.

The Cyclone IV FPGA family offers two variants, The Cyclone IV GX and Cyclone IV E.

Cyclone IV GX devices have up to 150K logic elements (LEs), up to 6.5-Mbits of RAM, up to 360 multipliers, and up to eight integrated 3.125-Gbps transceivers supporting mainstream protocols including Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), SDI, CPRI, V-by-One and Cyclone IV GX has hard IP for PCI Express (PCIe).

Gopal further said that the series eliminates the complex LVD's interface and supports V-by one interface, which would enable the board designers to simplify design interfaces and provide finer pixels.

“With this new series, we are expanding our reach to broadcast capture, 3D displays and industrial Ethernet devices and plan to address cost-sensitive, small form-factor applications in the wireless, wireline, broadcast, industrial and consumer markets,” he added.

Altera also announced the launch of Quartus II Software Version 9.1 to support the Cyclone IV series.

The three smallest Cyclone IV GX devices will be supported in the Quartus II design software v9.1 with the remaining Cyclone IV devices supported in the Quartus II design software v9.1 service pack 1.

“The software would help lot of small designs houses to design on our products with out any upfront costs,” concluded Gopal.