David Rutledge
Chief Technology Officer Lattice Semiconductor Corp
October, 2011
For years, FPGAs have been viewed as technology drivers - always moving to the most advanced process nodes in order to provide the highest possible gate density and speed - often at a high price in terms of power and cost. This talk will focus on a number technology and market trends that create both challenges and opportunities for not only the FPGA industry but the semiconductor industry as a whole.
TECHNOLOGY: Moore's Law and More Than Moore As Moore's Law moves us inexorably toward quantum limits, the benefits of each new node (speed, power, area) are less compelling while the costs are rapidly increasing. We will explore some of the fundamental challenges and opportunities that face today's semiconductor industry.
MARKETS & APPLICATIONS: Emergence of Mobile Computing Recent trends in mobile computing are driving a significant change to the technology landscape. While classic FPGA applications have been driven by a philosophy of "speed at any cost", today's consumer mobile appliances are driving new markets and applications that value low-cost and low-power above other factors. Once the domain of ASIC-only implementations (due to cost and power requirements), we will discuss some of the innovative technologies and products that Lattice has developed in order to expand the domain of FPGAs into these new markets and applications.