Digital set-top boxes convert digital signals from a satellite, cable, or terrestrial source and display them onto a television. The set-top box also enables the television set to act as a user interface to the internet. Digital televisions have built-in tuners, channel modulators and demultiplexers and do not require a digital set-top box to produce high quality pictures. A typical set-top box includes a tuner, channel modulator, demultiplexer, processor, memory, MPEG-2 audio and video decoders. Lattice PLDs are ideal for Wake-on-LAN packet detection.
Research has shown that stand-by power, or the power consumed by electronic devices when they are switched off or not performing their main function, account for 7-10% of the electricity use in homes and offices. Energy efficiency initiatives such as Energy Star (U.S. and Australia), ECCJ (Asia), KEMCO (Korea), and the EU Standby Initiative (Europe) have led to innovative consumer electronics that limit stand-by power to 1-Watt or less.
One of the technical solutions to the problem of reducing stand-by power is a smart electronic switch that cuts power when there is no load, or after some period of inactivity, and restores it immediately when required. PLDs are used with popular application chipsets to reduce standby power and minimize the time that key processors need to be powered on to detect system events. Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially set top boxes (STB), computers and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power state when inactive.
Wake-on-LAN (WoL) is an Ethernet computer networking standard that allows a computer to be turned on or awakened by a network message. The message is usually sent by a simple program executed on another computer on the local area network. Low cost IP-TV STBs and multi-function printers (MFPs) are ideal appliances to use Ethernet WoL as an interrupt to pull a power-hungry application processor out of sleep mode. A PLD, with its low current requirement, is a good candidate for a smart switch to detect Ethernet traffic to a printer or STB.
Within a STB architecture, as program updates or subscription content is pushed from the headend to the customer, their arrival can “wake up” the idle STB when it is addressed. An always-on, low-power CPLD like the ispMACH 4000ZE can quickly respond when the device is addressed by the network but also keep current consumption to a minimum. Static consumption of modern small CPLD like the LC4032ZE device is as low as 10 microamps (uAs). A fast CPLD is required to detect incoming frames because traditional low-cost, low-speed microcontrollers can not reliably detect incoming data on the media independent interface bus (MII) operating at 25 MHz.
Functions integrated into many consumer electronics applications are available from Lattice as Reference Designs. Reference Designs can be downloaded from the Lattice website free of charge. Development Kits from Lattice typically include an evaluation board, pre-programmed demonstration design, firmware, and documentation to speed new PLD design projects.
The MachXO2™ family is designed to offer an unprecedented mix of low cost, low power and high functional integration. Combining an optimized look-up table (LUT) architecture with 65-nm embedded flash process technology, MachXO2 devices provide designers the benefits of lower cost, reduced power consumption, and increased system integration in a small footprint offering a "Do-it-All PLD" for high volume, cost sensitive, low-power applications.
Designed for low-cost and ultra low power, Lattice’s ispMACH 4000ZE CPLDs can be used for Wake-On-LAN polling, power management, LED control, keypad monitoring, voltage level shifting and general purpose I/O expansion for processors.
The MachXO family of non-volatile, infinitely reconfigurable PLDs is designed for applications traditionally implemented using CPLDs or low-capacity FPGAs. Combining an optimized look-up table (LUT) architecture with low-cost embedded flash process technology, the instant-on, easy to use MachXO PLDs are ideal for general purpose I/O expansion, control, bus bridging and power-up management functions.
© Lattice Semiconductor Corporation 2012
