June 2007

Lattice Announces Industry's Fastest Low-Cost FPGA DDR2 SDRAM Controller

533 Mbps DDR2 Controller Available with LatticeECP2/M and LatticeSC FPGA Families

Lattice now offers the industry’s first 533 Mbps Double Data Rate 2 (DDR2) Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM) controller Intellectual Property (IP) core supporting a low-cost FPGA family. This DDR2 SDRAM IP core is optimized for Lattice’s award winning LatticeECP2/M low-cost FPGA families, as well as the high-end LatticeSC Extreme Performance FPGA family. 

DDR2 SDRAM Controller IP Core

The DDR2 SDRAM Controller IP core interfaces seamlessly with industry standard DDR2 SDRAM memory devices and has been performance-tuned for Lattice FPGAs. Not only does this IP core support all DDR2 commands, it also is extremely flexible, with intelligent bank management to minimize active commands, a synchronous implementation for reliable operation and a command pipeline to maximize throughput. The most common memory configurations are supported through a combination of variable address widths for different memory devices, programmable timing parameters, byte level writing through data mask signals and burst termination.

A primary feature of the LatticeECP2 and LatticeECP2M architectures is their pre-engineered, high performance parallel I/O that supports generic LVDS standards at speeds up to 840 Mbps. By leveraging the FPGA fabric capabilities, the DDR2 SDRAM Controller IP core is able to interface at a speed of 266 MHz, resulting in a data rate of 533 Mbps: an industry first in a low-cost FPGA architecture.

Availability

The DDR2 SDRAM controller is an IPexpress User Configurable IP core. The IPexpress design flow, included as a standard feature in Lattice’s ispLEVER design tool suite, allows designers to configure the core, generate netlists and simulations files, and evaluate the core in hardware before purchase. Detailed information about the IP core can be found on the Lattice website at http://www.latticesemi.com/products/intellectualproperty/ipcores/ddr2sdramcontrollerpipeli.cfm.

To download a full, free evaluation version of the DDR2 SDRAM IP core, please go to the Lattice IP Server tab in the IPexpress main window.