August 2006

Lattice Forums a Favorite on Website

August 2006 marks 6 months since the launch of the Lattice Forums. The forums, used mostly for technical support questions, are now a popular place on the Lattice website.

Our new Lattice Forums have been designed to save customers valuable time by enabling quick and easy access to Lattice's vast applications knowledge base, including FAQs, and have quickly risen to become one of the most popular destinations on the Lattice website.

Additionally, the forums have opened a new communications channel between our customers and our applications engineers, with new questions submitted daily, covering a broad range of topics including the newest LatticeECP2™ products and ispLEVER® design software.

Q: "Hello, I would like to know what the limiting factor is for the 200MHz DDR2 rating for LatticeECP2. ispLEVER gives me 250MHz fmax on my DDR2 design. Should I believe this? Or is the DDR2 frequency limited by some other consideration not visible to ispLEVER?" - Peter

 

A: "The DDR1/2 operating frequency/specification is set based on the current qualification of the DDR IP. This operating frequency/ specification may be adjusted due to future qualifications. The I/O of the LatticeECP2 is capable of 840Mbps in SDR I/O speeds. ispLEVER will provide you with the latest timing models, which may report better results than is currently advertised on the DDR IP. It would be up to you to verify that the design is meeting the proper timing characteristics above the guaranteed numbers." - Lattice Engineer

Open Dialog

Our forums were launched to encourage an exchange of ideas, knowledge and experience among our users. So far, the majority of questions support customer specific applications and issues. As more questions come in, the forums are contributing to the expanding online knowledge base, and enabling our user community to find information 24/7.

To date, Lattice engineers have been answering customer questions on the forums. However we are hopeful that as the forums continue to grow in popularity, and gain more support from our user community, they will be partially "self-powered": you ask the questions and the community, including Lattice engineers, posts the responses.

In addition, we are hopeful that our users might share their ideas on the future of the FPGA industry, how Lattice could improve things, etc. Lattice forums can supplement the existing FPGA industry forum comp.arch.fpga, focusing on Lattice and our latest effort to open communications, the Lattice blog.

The Lattice Forums are another step in our ongoing effort to deliver information in the way our customers want it: quickly and openly!