Lucent Launches FPGA Cores Development Program

Electronic News, Feb 8, 1999

Allentown, Pa. and San Jose, Calif.-Lucent Technologies' Microelectronics Group announced recently a program that will provide more "ready-to-run" circuit elements, also called IP cores, for system designers who use Lucent's ORCA field-programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated circuits.

Called the ORCA Core Alliance, the program engages independent intellectual property vendors to produce software-based ORCA FPGA Cores that perform standardized or established circuit functions. Designers of computer and communications systems can then drop these cores into their FPGA designs, eliminating the need to design the circuitry from scratch, freeing them to focus on the unique circuitry that sets their products apart from the competition, and bring complex systems to market faster.

Lucent's previous offerings focused on cores that performed peripheral component interconnect (PCI) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) functions, while the ORCA Core Alliance will focus on networking cores, as well as adding capabilities in areas such as signal processing, RISC microprocessors and microcontrollers, and memory controllers, in an effort to benefit communications systems designers with full system solutions and extending the use of ORCA FPGAs into other systems applications.

As part of the program, Lucent and the ORCA Core Alliance partners work together to define new cores that provide increased performance, functionality, and design flexibility along with lower price and faster time-to-market over other integrated circuit solutions. Designers will license the cores and receive support directly from the Alliance partners. Lucent, in turn, verifies that the cores provide an "out-of- the-box" solution, meeting performance claims and providing complete, easy-to-use documentation.

The cores developed in the program may in the future be offered as application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) cores or incorporated into Lucent's field-programmable system chip (FPSC), a device that combines mask-programmed standard-cell logic and field-programmable gate array logic on a single chip. FPSCs combine the increased component density, functionality and performance of standard-cell logic for established functions with programmability for faster development and timely delivery of new system features. Lucent is currently shipping FPSCs that provide PCI functionality in standard-cell logic.

The first member of the ORCA Core Alliance program is Modelware, which has been designing ATM Customer Solution Cores for Lucent since 1997. Also joining the program are Integrated Silicon Systems (ISS), Silicore and Logic Design Solutions (LDS). ISS is initially providing FIR filter cores for digital signal processing, Silicore is initially providing its SLC1655 RISC microprocessor core, and LDS is initially providing an SDRAM controller.