Lattice Relaunches MachXO5-NX and ORAN

Lattice Semiconductor, a leading global supplier of low-power programmable devices, recently announced the launch of the MachXO5™-NX family of products and a collection of ORAN solutions.

Industry Leading Safety Performance

The MachXO5™-NX product family further strengthens Lattice's long-standing leadership in control FPGAs designed to enhance system monitoring and control in the server computing, communications, industrial and automotive markets by delivering industry-leading low power consumption and reliability.

The MachXO5™-NX FPGA is the fifth device based on Lattice's Nexus™ platform, enabling the latest generation of secure control functionality through increased logic and memory resources, support for stable 3.3 V I/O, and a differentiated set of security features.One application of the MachXO5™-NX FPGA for servers is DC-SCM, the The Datacenter-ready Secure Control Module is a subproject of the OCP Hardware Management Project. It provides guidelines for moving common server management, security, and control functions from the motherboard to a standard-sized module (CFM). Lattice provides LTPI IP to fully support interfaces and protocols that conform to the DC-SCM 2.0 protocol specification for server management functions. Nearly all servers today use Lattice FPGA devices to implement functions that control PLDs, such as power/reset timing, various types of serial buses (I2C, SPI, eSPI, SGPIO, etc.), debug ports, LED drivers, FAN PWM drivers, front-panel switch sensing, and other general-purpose GPIO functions. At the same time, Lattice's PFR solutions have many of the features that customers and developers have come to expect, thus providing the safety features required for DC-SCM. As a result, all of the key features of DC-SCM 2.0 can be realized in a single FPGA from Lattice Semiconductor.

According to Zhenfan Xie, Director of Application Engineering, Asia Pacific, Lattice Semiconductor, Lattice FPGAs are extremely reliable and lead the industry in FPGA-based low-power applications, utilizing the FD-SOI process, which is 100 times more resistant to Soft Error Rates (SERs) than CMOS technology. This is due to the inherent advantages of the FD-SOI process, which also has the advantage of extremely low leakage current, giving Lattice FPGAs a strong advantage in low power consumption.

Accelerating Customer 5G Deployments

The Lattice ORAN solution set enables secure, flexible Open Radio Access Network (ORAN) deployments with stable control data security, flexible forward synchronization and low-power hardware acceleration. The introduction of this solution expands Lattice's comprehensive portfolio of application-oriented, low-power FPGA-based solutions.

The solution set enables ORAN deployments by providing robust security (encryption, authentication, trusted root), flexible forward synchronization (ORAN function deaggregation, IEEE 1588. eCPRI, TSN) and low-power hardware acceleration for functions such as MACsec/IPsec, 5G-ORAN small cells and more. These are essential as wireless networks shift to a new paradigm of software-defined networking (SDN) and deaggregation.

Its first release focuses on addressing the increasing security threats posed by SDN and large-scale deaggregation. In this environment, it is critical to secure all aspects of the platform design to prevent network failures and leakage of proprietary sensitive data. The Lattice ORAN solution collection provides encryption and authentication capabilities over the PCIe interface, providing a secure channel for all commands and messages passing through the interface. In addition, it provides protection for out-of-band communications over PCIe, SMBus and I2C.

In addition, the Lattice ORAN solution combines a hardware platform, secure IP modules, easy-to-use FPGA and Lattice Propel? and Lattice Radiant? software design tools, reference designs and demos, as well as customized design services as required.

With this off-the-shelf solution, 5G customers who are considering deploying an ORAN solution can quickly implement reference code, customize their application with easy-to-use Radiant and Propel tools, and then implement it on Lattice's low-power and secure FPGAs and test it on a development board. This one-stop-shop collection of solutions accelerates time-to-market for 5G ORAN solutions.