Atmel provides glimpse of programmable IC future

Electronic News, June 30, 1997

At the same time, the company rolled out a 3.3-volt low density SPLD featuring a 5 microamp standby capability and targeted at battery-operated applications that utilize a low-voltage, high speed microprocessor.

One of the areas that Atmel is currently "looking at, yet has no concrete plans," in terms of specific products, according to Ravi Pragasam, EPLD strategic marketing manager, is embedding cores onto CPLDs--something the industry has been littered with talk about recently. Taking complex macros--such as an ARM, AVI, PCI master or DRAM core--and embedding them into the silicon of a flash- or EEPROM-based CPLD is an area that no one has yet to venture into in the programmable logic industry, Mr. Pragasam said. Integrating intellectual property (IP) into SRAM-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has been a main driving force in the industry so far in 1997, with little IP developed in the CPLD arena.

"We have the cores and we certainly have the technology in our ASIC library to accomplish such a task," said Mr. Pragasam. "We can do it with our in-house cores and there is always the possibility of going outside to third parties and utilizing those as well."

Atmel also is discussing the possibility of incorporating in-system programming (ISP) functions into its line of SPLDs. The company has done research into what its SPLD OEMs are looking for and ISP is one of the key areas of interest, along with additional performance, speed and low voltage upgrades.

According to market research firm In-Stat, the SPLD market is expected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of negative 1.3 percent to the year 2000; however, its presence will still be felt. Currently, only three companies have a significant presence in the SPLD market: Vantis, the programmable logic division of AMD; Lattice Semiconductor; and Atmel.

In-Stat predicts the CAGR for the CPLD market will be approximately 48 percent nudging out FPGAs which are expected to grow at approximately 37 percent a year between now and the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, based on an industry standard 16V8 architecture, Atmel's latest SPLD, dubbed the ATF16LV8C, features a 5 microamp standby current, 250 gates, a TPD of 10 nanoseconds, eight outputs, and is configured automatically with software. The device is available now priced at $2.64 per unit in volume quantities.