Intel White Paper Next-Generation FPGAs Will Achieve Breakthrough Advantages

Expect a Breakthrough Advantage in

Next-Generation FPGAs

Stephen Lim, Product Marketing Manager, Components, Intel Corporation

WP-01199-1.2 White Paper

This white paper covers examples of why telecommunication bandwidth and the infrastructure behind it is driving FPGA capabilities, business challenges of ASICs and ASSPs, and how a tailored approach for programmable logic devices (PLDs) provide a leap in FPGA capabilities. This paper also outlines a portfolio of next- generation FPGAs and So Cs.

Introduction

Newly announced FPGAs will be one of the key enablers for hardware architects, software developers, and system designers to achieve their next-generation product goals. Exponentially increasing bandwidth requirements throughout the broad telecommunication infrastructures and the industries using this bandwidth are making it difficult for existing hardware and software solutions to offer the needed performance while still meeting their cost and power goals. ASICs, ASSPs, and standalone processors have growing limitations and inherent costs that PLD companies address. At the same time however, the broad scope of end applications that face these increased bandwidth challenges will require PLD companies to use different tools and options to meet a diverse set of needs. PLD companies that have access to these options and the ability to apply them effectively will give hardware and software developers breakthrough advantages and capabilities to build their next-generation products.

The Need for Ever-Increasing Bandwidth and Flexibility Drives the Need for a Breakthrough in Capability

The increased capabilities in smartphones and other portable devices are the reason for the dramatic leap in system performance that we will see in next-generation FPGAs. The explosion of mobility bandwidth requirements are putting a huge demand on the wireless, wired, and data center infrastructure capabilities. While the number of smartphones is growing at single digit percentage rates, the customers of these devices continue to drive more bandwidth with the ever-increasing smartphone capability. Much of this is due to the increased video content. In 2012, average smartphone data usage grew by 81 percent. Cisco expects mobile traffic to increase 66 percent per year through 2017 and two-thirds of all mobile traffic will be video content. At this time, mobile network speed is expected to increase by seven times

(1) (see Figure

and 4G networks to comprise 45 percent of all traffic 1).

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