Lattice Developers Conference: Advancing the Low Power FPGA Ecosystem

With Lattice recently hosted other industry leaders and the vibrant FPGA ecosystem during the inaugural Lattice Developers Conference to explore the latest trends and opportunities for programmable solutions. Joined by experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Security, Advanced Connectivity, and more, the Lattice Developers Conference showcased Lattice’s strong and growing global ecosystem of customers, IP & reference platform partners, and developers fostering power efficiency, performance, and small size FPGA leadership to bring the next era of technology innovation across Communications, Computing, Automotive, and Industrial markets.

All conference sessions are now all available on-demand for free, featuring an incredible lineup of keynote speakers from Lattice, NVIDIA, BMW, and Meta, technical breakout sessions with a variety of notable industry experts, and a robust collection of FPGA-based technology demonstrations. Read on to learn how to access this plethora of insightful content.

3 Days of FPGA Industry Insights

The 3-day event was organized around daily themes focused around trending industry topics and was designed to ensure every attendee left the conference with actionable guidance and new perspectives. Now that it’s all on-demand, users can pick and choose sessions of their areas of interest or follow the conference agenda that was curated with daily themes as below.

Day 1 “Low Power FPGAs”: The first day of the Lattice Developers Conference focused on how low power FPGAs are shaping the future of technology innovation. Sessions ranged from FPGA introductions and the benefits of low power designs to deep dives on timing constraints, power optimization, and USB applications. The conference’s opening keynotes were delivered by Lattice executives announcing the expansion of the mid-range Lattice Avant™ FPGA portfolio with two new device families — Avant™-G and Avant™-X — that deliver class-leading performance, power efficiency, and resilient security feature sets, alongside expanded application-specific solution stacks, and enhanced software capabilities.

Day 1 also featured a notable keynote from NVIDIA announcing a new reference sensor bridging design in collaboration with Lattice with a “Synergizing AI Acceleration and Low-Latency I/O for Edge Intelligence” session. This new offering is designed to accelerate the development of Edge AI applications by leveraging power-efficient Lattice FPGA technology and the NVIDIA Orin platform.

Day 2 “Enabling Technologies”: The second day of the conference focused on the implementation of innovative technologies like IoT, Cloud, Edge, AI, quantum computing, and more. It kicked off with keynotes from Lattice and Meta, followed by sessions about the challenge of connecting sensors securely, and the vast industry innovations, regulations, and initiatives that are creating next-generation datacenters.

Additionally, Day 2 featured three guest panel discussions focused on Edge AI, Connectivity, and Security with industry luminaries from AMI, AWS, BMW, Exor, Intel, Lenovo, MassRobotics, Meta, More than Moore, Neurala, NVIDIA, and Secure-IC. Keep reading to learn more below.

Day 3 “End Market Applications”: The third day examined how Lattice application-focused solution stacks are driving innovation across industries, systems, and processes — including Automotive, Industrial, Communications, and more. It started with keynotes from Lattice and BMW. Other key sessions highlighted the increasing implementation of power-efficient, low-latency, and small-footprint FPGAs in modern applications, and the needs and challenges associated with the transformation IoT 4.0.

In addition to these sessions, there are also over 40+ technology demo video sessions by a variety of FPGA innovators showcasing real-world examples of low power FPGA designs for post-quantum cryptography, sensor bridging, 3D head pose, driver monitoring systems, OCP servers, DC-SCM and LTPI, and more.

Deeper Dive into Edge AI, Connectivity, and Security
There were three panel sessions during the event, focusing on emerging key technology inflection points including Edge AI, connectivity, and security, and the tremendous opportunities stemming from Edge to Cloud innovation. Speakers from Lattice and other industry leaders provided key insights on the criticality of prioritizing cross-sector collaboration, flexibility, and power efficiency when designing future-proof applications.

Edge AI Technology Outlook and Use Cases
Participants: Denis Lavelle (Mirametrix), Al Makley (Lenovo), Dr. Ian Cutress (More Than Moore), Massimiliano Versace (Neurala), Amit Goel (NVIDIA)

In this session, industry experts dove into the latest trends and applications in Edge AI technology. During the discussion, the panelists shared insights into the latest market trends and emerging use cases for Edge AI, as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with this rapidly evolving technology.

The panelists discussed the rapid migration toward Edge AI and how the industry must future-proof advancements from a hardware perspective. The discussion also delved into how FPGAs can be a useful tool for this as they merge power efficiency with customization abilities, alongside their reprogrammable nature playing a key role in delivering real-time updates.

Sensor to Cloud Connectivity
Participants: Richard Barry (AWS), Alfred Haslbeck (BMW), Claudio Ambra (Exor), Mark Hoopes (Lattice), Tom Ryden (Mass Robotics)

This panel discussed trends and challenges in next generation IoT 4.0 based factory automation systems, and their perspective on how FPGA-based solutions address challenges in key areas such as connectivity, predictive maintenance, safety, and security. With more and more factories implementing automation and IoT devices, there are an increasing number of sensors that require powerful, secure, and scalable connectivity. These sensors must help process and communicate sensor data from the Edge to the cloud while also ensuring synchronization and other requirements are met.

They also discussed how FPGAs have emerged as a critical solution to support IoT connectivity and ensure data is transferred quickly and securely. With FPGAs, platforms and processors can work in tandem to provide connectivity to more interfaces in real time. As the industrial sector becomes increasingly connected alongside the rise of 5G, FPGAs will be an important tool for developers to ensure smart factories remain secure and efficient.

Resilient Security
Participants: Stefano Righi (AMI), Jeanne Guillory (Intel), Eric Sivertson (Lattice), Indranil Banerjee (Meta), Dr. Sylvian Guilley (Secure-IC),

The security panel session explored the edge to cloud security storm including security needs in open and disaggregated systems, and the looming post quantum threat when traditional cryptography becomes defunct. The panel assessed how cybersecurity is moving away from the legacy “castle model” in favor of a more distributed and collaborative environment. Due to the rise of cloud-based networks, most devices utilized today are no longer in a protected bubble and firmware vulnerabilities are growing by the year. With a widening attack surface, more robust security approaches are imperative to combatting malicious threats.

The panel also reviewed emerging solutions using crypto-agile low power FPGAs as they implement zero-trust methodologies and Root of Trust (RoT) solutions that help establish a unified line of defense. With dedicated security protocols and IDs, FPGA-enabled RoT devices ensure a system’s core functions and critical components can be verified as genuine and unaltered, mitigating the risk of unauthorized access or malicious tampering. Further, with FPGAs, even if a rogue agent is able to get into the firmware platform, developers are able to restore the original state and return to a secure base.

Watch the Lattice Developers Conference On Demand

The Lattice Developers Conference brought leading ecosystem partners and developers together to explore the latest trends, opportunities, and low power programmable solutions for key applications like Edge AI, security, robotics, and connectivity.

These insightful keynotes, panel discussions, breakout sessions, and demos are available now on-demand. Visit the event portal to register and watch now.

If you’d like to learn more about how Lattice FPGA solutions can help you achieve your design goals and accelerate time to market, reach out to speak with the team at Lattice.