The Industry’s Fastest CPLDs
Altera’s MAX® II devices are the industry’s fastest CPLDs. With support for internal clock frequency rates of up to 300 MHz, MAX II devices provide designers with fast system performance at a time when demand for faster performance in CPLDs is dramatically increasing. MAX II devices are based on a groundbreaking new CPLD architecture with internal performance rates double that of the prior MAX 7000A family. Based on benchmark data using the design space explorer (DSE) feature in Quartus® II design software, MAX II devices are on average 76 percent faster than Xilinx’s CoolRunner-II devices (shown in Figure 1).
Figure 1. Performance Comparison of MAX II Devices vs. CoolRunner-II Devices (1)
Note: 1The benchmark data is based on results from Quartus II version 5.0 and ISE 7.1i service pack 1
Optimized Routing Architecture for CPLD Design
In addition to the new logic architecture in MAX II devices, Altera improved several other architectural features to offer faster pin-to-pin delays and more I/O capabilities. They include routing improvements that enable pin-to-pin delays as fast as 3.6 nanoseconds (ns) (shown in Table 1), which allows MAX II devices to offer faster pin-to-pin speeds at a given density than competitor CPLDs.
| Table 1. MAX II Maximum Pin-to-Pin Delays |
| Parameter |
EPM240 |
EPM570 |
EPM1270 |
EPM2210 |
Unit |
| tPD1 |
4.7
|
5.5
|
6.3
|
7.1
|
ns |
| tPD2 |
3.8
|
3.7
|
3.7
|
3.7
|
ns |
Figure 2. Difference Between tPD1 & tPD2 Parameters
High-Performance Software
MAX II devices are supported by Quartus II design software. Using push-button compilations and the built-in Quartus II synthesis engine, the MAX II architecture increases maximum core frequency (fMAX) by 2X on average when compared to MAX 7000A CPLDs. However, MAX II performance can be improved even more using the Quartus II DSE. By employing this feature to optimize speed, designers can increase performance by as much as 2.5X when compared to the original push-button MAX 7000A compilation. Software support for MAX II devices is also available with the no-cost Quartus II Web Edition software that is available for download on the Altera® website.
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