Microchip Unveils the Pin-Compatible, Cost-Optimized PolarFire Core Family of FPGAs and SoCs
New parts come in up to 30 percent cheaper than their predecessors, but you'll lose the originals' high-speed serial transceivers.
Microchip has announced a new family of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and system-on-chips (SoCs), designed to drop the entry point for those interested in its PolarFire offerings by nearly a third: the PolarFire Core range.
"Many FPGA manufacturers have raised prices recently, creating new challenges for OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] needing to bring products to market quickly, at the lowest possible cost and power targets," claims Bruce Weyer, corporate vice president of Microchip's FPGA arm. "Our PolarFire Core FPGA and SoC families address price and power budget challenges directly, providing market-leading solutions at a favorable price point."
As the name suggests, PolarFire Core is designed to sit alongside the classic PolarFire and PolarFire SoC line-up — including full compatibility with Microchip's Libero SoC Design Suite software, SmartHLS compiler, the VectorBlox accelerator IP, and the broader Mi-V ecosystem. The difference: the removal of integrated high-speed serial transceivers and the "optimization" of other features to drop the cost by up to 30 percent, model-dependent.
The new PolarFire Core range is available in configurations up to 481k logic elements (LEs), the same as the full-fat PolarFire family. The parts are pin-compatible, meaning they should be drop-in replacements for boards originally designed around the original PolarFire parts, while developers can use existing PolarFire evaluation and development hardware to experiment ahead of deploying the PolarFire Core parts in a finished design.
More information is available on Microchip's PolarFire product page.
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