Episode 68: The Wide World of FPGAs

The Circuit · 22 May 2024 · 37m · Episode 69

What this episode covers

Esam Elashmawi, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Lattice, explains the unique value of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) as reprogrammable semiconductor devices that offer time-to-market advantages and differentiation over fixed-function ASICs. He details Lattice's leadership in the small and mid-range FPGA market, highlighting their Nexus and Avon platforms which prioritize power efficiency, performance, and small form factors for applications in communications, computing, industrial, and automotive sectors. Elashmawi discusses how FPGAs enable 'crypto agility' and rapid algorithm updates in AI and security use cases, allowing companies to protect their 'secret sauce' and adapt to vulnerabilities in the field without hardware changes. The conversation also covers Lattice's high barriers to entry, the growing dollar content per server, and specific AI implementations on client devices like laptops for battery management and user experience enhancement.

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • The Robot Report Podcast · 1h 08m

    How FPGAs become the gatekeepers of Physical AI Security

    Eric Sivertson, VP of Security Business at Lattice Semiconductor, explains how FPGAs provide deterministic guardrails for physical AI and robotics, addressing the shift from traditional IT risk to real-world safety risks. He details how FPGAs can monitor system buses in real-time to enforce cyber resilience, ensuring that probabilistic AI decisions are checked against deterministic hardware constraints. The discussion highlights the vulnerability of main processors like GPUs and MCUs, which lack internal non-volatile memory, and positions Lattice's Root of Trust (ROT) components as essential for secure boot and runtime recovery. Sivertson argues that integrating these security features early in the design cycle is critical for humanoids and autonomous systems to gain market trust and avoid regulatory backlash.

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 15m

    Efinix FPGAs with Sammy Cheung

    Sammy Cheung, CEO and co-founder of Efinix, explains how the company’s disruptive SLR (Switchable Logic and Routing) FPGA architecture enables small, low-power devices like the Trion and Titanium to compete with traditional FPGAs in edge computing and computer vision applications. Cheung details the company’s history, from its founding in 2012 and initial pivot after Intel’s acquisition of Altera, to its current scaling phase where it sells millions of units and partners with sensor and microcontroller companies for System-in-Package (SiP) solutions. The discussion covers the technical advantages of the Titanium chip, including its 16nm process, embedded RISC-V soft cores, and specialized DSP blocks for AI, as well as the strategic challenges of growing from a scrappy startup into a larger organization while maintaining its culture.

  • OnTrack · 36m

    Is FPGA the Best Engineering Career? With Adam Taylor

    Adam Taylor, founder of Adiuvo Engineering and FPGA Horizons, explains why he considers FPGA engineering a top career choice, citing the evolution of FPGAs from simple glue logic to advanced compute platforms with AI engines. He discusses how modern FPGA tools are more accessible and how AI-driven agentic coding assistants are changing RTL development by acting as a new layer of abstraction rather than replacing engineers. Taylor also details the success of his vendor-neutral conference, FPGA Horizons, and its expansion to the US through a partnership with PCEA at PCB East, highlighting the critical need for collaboration between FPGA and PCB designers to handle high-speed signaling and complex power requirements.

  • Oxide and Friends · 1h 54m

    Heterogeneous Computing with Raja Koduri

    Raja Koduri, former chief architect at Intel and AMD, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to explain the differences between CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs through historical and analogical lenses. Koduri traces the evolution from 3dfx and Direct3D to CUDA, arguing that NVIDIA’s success stems from a tight coupling of programming and execution models, which creates a sticky ecosystem. He uses transportation analogies to categorize these technologies—cars for CPUs, buses for GPUs, and construction vehicles for FPGAs—and discusses how advanced packaging and memory bandwidth are becoming the primary constraints in modern AI hardware.

  • Moore's Lobby · 1h 02m

    Leading the RISC-V Revolution, SiFive Aims to Take the Computing Industry Throne

    Jack Kang, Senior Vice President at SiFive and a founding team member, discusses his career trajectory from designing CPUs at Marvell and NVIDIA (working on the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Switch) to joining the startup. He explains how SiFive leverages the open RISC-V standard to offer high-performance, low-power processors for applications ranging from wearables to data centers, aiming to disrupt the proprietary ARM and x86 markets. Kang highlights the strategic advantage of RISC-V's modularity and openness, particularly in automotive and AI, where rapid innovation requires flexible, programmable hardware solutions rather than fixed, legacy architectures.

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