Episode 68: The Wide World of FPGAs
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.