Top 4 FPGA Manufacturers Worldwide

FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array, is currently one of the mainstream platforms for the most widely used digital systems in the world. Its market prospects are attractive, but its high threshold is unparalleled in the chip industry. There are currently four major manufacturers, all from the United States.

TOP 1: AMD / Xilinx, Inc.

Xilinx Inc is a leading global supplier of complete programmable logic solutions and currently the number one FPGA solution provider. Xilinx was acquired by AMD in 2022.

Development tools: Vivado, ISE (after the release of Vivado, Xilinx no longer considers upgrading the version of ISE).

AMD / Xilinx products include the following parts:

1. Spartan series: positioned in the low-end market, currently the latest device is Spartan7, which uses the 28nm process, while Spartan6 used to use the 45nm process. This series of devices is affordable and has a relatively small logical scale.
2. Artix series: Xilinx has launched the Artix series products, with the aim of serving as a transitional product between low-end Spartan and high-end Kinex. Especially in terms of communication interfaces, it has significant advantages compared to Spartan. Therefore, if the design does not only require logical resources, but also advanced high-speed interfaces, consider the Artix series.
3. The Kindex and Virtex series are high-end products of Xilinx, including the 28nm Kindex7 and Virtex 7 series, the 20nm Kindex7 Ultrascale and Virtex 7 Ultrascale series, and the 16nm Kindex7 Ultrascale+and Virtex 7 Ultrascale+series. Rich high-speed interfaces, mainly used in high-end fields such as communication, radar, signal processing, IC verification, etc.
4. Fully programmable SoC and MPSoC series, including Zynq-7000 and Zynq UltraScale+MPSoC series FPGA, embedded with ARM Cortex series CPU.

TOP 2: INTEL / Altera Corporation

Altera Corporation is an FPGA supplier in the chip industry that is on par with Xilinx. It was acquired by CPU giant Intel in 2015.

Development tool: QuartusII.

Product series:

1. MAXII series

        The MAXII series is CPLD, and Altera is famous for its CPLD.

2. Cyclone series

        The latest one is Cyclone10, which has a high cost performance ratio, similar to Xilinx's Spartan and Artix series.

3. Stratix series

        The latest one is Stratix10, which is a high-end application that competes with Xilinx's Kinex and Virtex series.

4. Arria series

       SOC series FPGA with built-in ARM Cortex A9 core.

5. Intel's New Product Arria 10 FPGA Series

       FPGA that supports DDR4 memory interface. Hardware designers can now use the latest Quartus II software v14.1 to achieve a 666 Mbps DDR4 memory data         rate in Arria 10 FPGA and SoC designs.

TOP 3: Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice Semiconductor is a renowned provider of programmable logic solutions, second only to Xilinx and Altera.

Development tool: ISPLEVER

Product Introduction:

1. The ECP series is a FPGA series developed by Lattice itself, providing low-cost, high-density FPGA solutions, as well as high-speed Serdes and other interfaces, which are mostly suitable for civilian product solutions.
2. The ICE series, aimed at acquiring SilioncBlue's ultra-low power FPGA, was also used in the iPhone 7, achieving the first application of FPGA in consumer products, demonstrating how low its power consumption is.
3. The Mach series is the best choice to replace CPLD and achieve adhesive logic. As the inventor of CPLD, Lattice still excels in the field of CPLD.

TOP 4: Microsemi / Microchip

Microsemi has acquired Actel, focusing on the US military and aviation industries. Its products mainly include anti fuse structure FPGAs and Flash based FPGAs, which have advantages in radiation resistance and high reliability. Recently, Microsemi has been acquired by Microchip.

Development tool: Libero

Product Introduction:

1. The universal FPGA series based on FLASH includes three high-end, mid-range, and low-end series: PolarFireMid Range FPGAs, RTG4Radiation Tolant FPGAs, and IGLOO2Low Density FPGAs.
2. Special field application series, such as SOC based Mi-V RISC-VEcosystem and SmartFusion2SoC FPGA.