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Renesas Enters FPGA Market with the First Ultra-Low-Power, Low-Cost Family Addressing Low-Density, High-Volume Applications

06.12. 2021 | News
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Renesas Electronics Corporation announced that it is entering the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) market with a new line of very low-cost, very low-power devices. The ForgeFPGA™ Family will address the underserved market need for relatively small amounts of programmable logic that can be quickly and efficiently designed into cost-sensitive applications.

The ForgeFPGA devices will provide dramatic cost savings versus other alternatives, including non-FPGA designs. By providing a high level of integration, they reduce overall board and system costs. Their projected price in volume of well under US$ 0.50, opens up applications that previously couldn’t use FPGAs due to cost constraints, including high-volume consumer and IoT applications.

The ForgeFPGA Family will serve applications that require less than 5,000 gates of logic, with initial device sizes of 1K and 2K Look Up Tables (LUTs). Standby power of less than 20 microamps is projected for the first devices, about half the power of competing devices. Users will be able to download the development software at no cost and with no license fees. The software offers two development modes to accommodate both new and experienced FPGA developers: a “macrocell mode” that uses a schematic capture-based development flow, and an “HDL” mode that provides a familiar Verilog environment for FPGA veterans.

ForgeFPGA engineering samples are available now, along with beta design software and a prototype development kit. The first ForgeFPGA device, the 1K LUT offering, is expected to be available in production quantities in Q2 2022 (more info).

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