Atmel Announces Embedded FPGA Cores for Enable Programmable ASICS; Programmable ASICs, ASSPs - AT40K field-programmable gate arrays - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Sept 6, 1999

Atmel Corporation announced Wednesday a family of embedded FPGA cores for the implementation of programmable ASICs, ASSPs and SoCs. Available in densities of 10,000, 40,000 or 80,000 gates, the AT40K FPGA cores may be embedded with Atmel gate arrays.

The embedded FPGA core can be integrated today along with any of Atmel's extensive library of cores that includes ARM, AVR and 8051 microcontrollers; Oak, LODE and Prometheus DSPs; audio, voice and data codecs; analog; Building blocks; RF; IR; and USB, PCI, PC card, SPI and SCSI interfaces. Atmel ASIC libraries also include EEPROM, flash, ROM, RAM, FIFO, and CAN memories.

According to Joel Rosenberg, Atmel's Product Line Director for Programmable System Level Integration Products, "Now, for the first time ever, designers can put complete system-on-a-chip functionality on an Atmel ASIC, while maintaining the flexibility of programmability. In most cases, the lion's share of functionality is fixed and never needs to change. A small fraction of a system is used to implement the differentiating product features. Imaging, video, audio telecommunications and networking protocols that change can be implemented in the embedded AT40K FPGA, while the remainder of function that is fixed is implemented in the ASIC. Multiple products with different feature sets can be implemented in the same silicon.

"Atmel has a mature ASSP business in which we have perfected the designs and the process technologies for most types of volatile and non-volatile memory as well as a wide range of application specific functions, including MPEG or JPEG decoders, DCT engines, NTSC encoders 10/100 Ethernet MAC 10/100 BaseTx PHY, RSA and DES engines; GSM, CDMA and many others.

"In addition, Atmel has a suite of industry-standard FPGA and microcontroller design tools that have been refined and matured during the past decade. And only Atmel has developed a supporting design tool suite. This is not a technology announcement," Rosenberg continued. "It is a product announcement. Designers who want to embed programmable logic in an ASIC can do it today, and have design tools to support their products."

Atmel's AT40K is a family of fully PCI-compliant, SRAM-based FPGAs with distributed 10ns programmable synchronous/asynchronous, dual port/single port SRAM, 8 global clocks, Cache Logic partial or full reconfigurability, on-the-fly, and automatic component generators. With its 8-sided logic cell and orthogonal connectivity, the AT40K is ideally suited for designs that require extensive digital signal processing such as video processing, telecommunications and multimedia. The AT40K architecture supports the efficient implantation of parallel multipliers and barrel shifters generally used in these applications. Atmel's distributed FreeRAM capability enables the design of multiple RAM structures without wasting any logic.

The AT40K FPGA core can be integrated on Atmel ASICs with densities of 50K, 100K, 250K and 500K gates and come in PLCC, PQFP, TQFP, VQFP, BGA and PGA packages.

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with manufacturing facilities in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Nantes and Rousset, France and Heilbronn, Germany. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets on a worldwide basis advanced logic, mixed-signal, non-volatile memory, and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system level integration semiconductor solutions using advanced CMOS, BiCMOS, BiPolar and SiGe process technologies.

Atmel product and financial information are available from its Fax-on-Demand service. In North America call 1-800-292-8635 or Internationally, call 1-408-441-0732. Requests may be made via e-mail to literature@atmel.com or by visiting Atmel's web site at www.atmel.com.