Supporting embedded vision applications at the Edge, however, requires devices offer certain design and performance characteristics: low power consumption, high performance, high reliability and a small form factor. For these applications, Lattice has built a new family of FPGAs under the Lattice CrossLink-NX™ brand (http://www.latticesemi.com/CrossLink-NX). Lattice’s CrossLink-NX FPGA is the first FPGA developed on the Lattice Nexus FGPA platform (http://www.latticesemi.com/Solutions/Solutions/SolutionsDetails02/LatticeNexus), which is the industry’s first 28nm FD-SOI-based FPGA platform optimized for low power operation in a small form factor. CrossLink-NX FPGA provides the energy efficiency, small form factor, high reliability and high performance developers in communications, compute, industrial, automotive, and consumer markets need to enable innovative embedded vision solutions for the Edge. These new chips are designed to address the latest trends in video processing: mixing multiple sensors and displays, higher resolution video, multiple interfaces, and Edge AI processing. The performance claims above and below are based on extensive in-house competitive benchmark testing between CrossLink-NX and two other mainstream FPGAs of comparable logic density. – CrossLink-NX provides up to a 75 percent reduction in power consumption compared to competing devices of a similar class.. With power this low, even battery-powered Edge devices can process AI/ML data locally, rather than upload it to the cloud for analysis. – Depending on the specific configuration, CrossLink-NX FPGAs are up to 90 percent smaller than similar competitive devices. This allows developers to add AI/ML processing capabilities to a new or existing design without having to increase the size of overall design footprint. – Thanks to physical characteristics of its circuits and onboard ECC and SEC support, CrossLink-NX FPGAs provide extremely high reliability. Specifically, CrossLink-NX FPGAs are 100 times more resistant to soft errors (a phenomenon caused by high energy particles striking transistors in an FPGA and disrupting performance) than similar competitive devices. – Available in package sizes as small as 3.7 mm x 4.1 mm, CrossLink-NX is up to 90 percent smaller than similar competitive devices, making it easy to integrate the device into new or existing embedded vision systems. CrossLink-NX is also supported by a robust library of design software, IP blocks and application reference designs that make it quick and easy for developers to integrate CrossLink-NX FPGAs into new or existing Edge designs. The Crosslink-NX family is flexible enough to address several different segments in the video switching and image processing market. Many of these applications require support for bridging and/or aggregation of data streams between multiple displays, camera and sensors (image sensors and others). In addition, these parts can be used for simultaneous video processing and AI/ML inferencing. The FPGAs are very power efficient, so they can be used in mobile, battery-powered devices, yet are still powerful enough to use in computing and industrial control applications. In video surveillance and security applications, CrossLink-NX can be used for sensor aggregation and bridging, in addition to powering AI inferencing to preprocess the sensor data with functions such as facial recognition or presence detection. The chip can be used as an embedded vision co-processor to merge up to 14 sensors. It can also be used for video scaling, rotation, and color space conversions. With this chip, one sensor stream can be sent to multiple locations, which is useful in applications such as automotive, where cameras need to feed multiple processing units. Key features of the CrossLink-NX include: Low power – built on the Lattice Nexus FPGA platform, CrossLink-NX provides up to a 75 percent reduction in power consumption compared to competing FPGAs of a similar class. High reliability – CrossLink-NX has a Soft Error Rate (SER) up to 100 times lower than similar FPGAs in its class, making it a compelling solution for mission critical applications that must operate safely and reliably. The initial CrossLink-NX device is designed to support ruggedized environments found in outdoor, industrial, and automotive applications. Performance – CrossLink-NX delivers enhanced performance enabled by three key elements: Fast I/O support – CrossLink-NX FPGAs are well-suited for embedded vision applications thanks to support for multiple fast I/Os, including MIPI, PCIe and DDR3 memory. Instant on performance – to better support applications where a long system boot time is unacceptable, such as industrial motor control, CrossLink-NX enables ultra-fast I/O configuration in 3 ms and total device configuration in less than 15 ms. High memory to logic ratio – to efficiently power AI inferencing in Edge devices, CrossLink-NX features 170 bits of memory for every logic cell, the highest memory to logic ratio in its class, providing 2x the performance compared to prior generations. Small form factor – to support customer system miniaturization, the first CrossLink-NX device is available in a 6 x 6 mm form factor which is up to ten times smaller than similar competing FPGAs in its class. Software tools and IP – in addition to its new Lattice Radiant 2.0 design software, Lattice offers a robust library of popular IP cores including interfaces like MIPI D-PHY, PCIe, SGMII and OpenLDI, and demos for common embedded vision applications such as 4:1 image sensor aggregation.
