Low-cost I/O expansion and bridging starter kit for instant-on non-volatile FPGAs

Lattice Semiconductor has announced availability of the MachXO3L Starter Kit, an easy-to-use platform for evaluating and designing with the company's low-cost family of MachXO3L instant-on, non-volatile FPGAs. Product developers can now immediately deploy programmable bridging and I/O expansion with breakthrough I/O density at the lowest cost per I/O that Lattice offers, says the company. The MachXO3L family is Lattice's next-generation small form factor FPGA family for essential bridging and I/O expansion functions needed to accommodate the increasing connectivity requirements of mobile-influenced applications in the communications, computing, consumer and industrial markets. The new MachXO3L Starter Kit enables designers to evaluate and demonstrate LED drive, SPI, I2C, CMOS I/O, programming via JTAG or I2C, dual-boot operation using SPI Flash and other capabilities. The MachXO3L Starter Kit consists of reference designs pre-loaded onto a LCMXO3L-6900C-5BG256C device for demonstration and easy bring-up of the embedded I2C and SPI controllers as well as the oscillator and programmable I/O used for LED drive. The kit also includes a USB connector for power and programming, LEDs, prototyping area and an expansion header landing for SPI, I2C and JTAG supported by 3.3V and 1.2V supply rails. The MachXO3L device featured on the board is supported by Lattice Diamond development tools, available for download and free licensing from the company's web site. "The new low cost MachXO3L Starter Kit gives customers a very affordable tool to evaluate most of the MachXO3L device's basic functions - a good way anyone can start evaluating our industry-leading MachXO3L non-volatile FPGAs," said Abul Nuruzzaman, MachXO product line manager, Lattice Semiconductor.