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About Stratix Series High-End FPGAs

The Stratix® series of FPGA families enables you to deliver high-performance, state-of-the-art products to market faster with lower risk and higher productivity. By combining high density, high performance, and a rich feature set, FPGAs in the Stratix series allow you to integrate more functions and maximize system bandwidth. The Stratix series of FPGA families includes GX variant devices with on-chip transceivers—serializer/deserializer (SERDES)—to allow the transfer of data in and out of the FPGA at high frequencies.

 Table 1. Stratix Series Introduction

Device Family

Stratix Stratix GX Stratix II Stratix II GX Stratix III Stratix IV
Year of Introduction 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2008
Process Technology 130 nm 130 nm 90 nm 90 nm 65 nm 40 nm
Recommended for New Designs? No No Yes Yes Yes Yes

All of the Stratix FPGA series families have HardCopy® ASIC equivalent devices. HardCopy ASICs provide a path to low-cost volume production with low risk through FPGA prototyping of your design. Stratix series FPGAs are also ideal for the prototyping and verification of Standard Cell ASICs.

Stratix IV FPGAs are the fourth-generation Stratix FPGA family and provide the highest density, highest performance and lowest power of any 40-nm FPGA. With enhanced (E) and enhanced with transceivers (GX) variants, Stratix IV FPGAs address many markets and applications, such as wireless and wireline communications, military, and broadcast.

Stratix III FPGAs are the industry’s lowest power high-performance 65-nm FPGAs. Logic rich (L) and enhanced for memory (E) and digital signal processing (DSP) variants allow you to balance your resource requirements to your design without having to design in a device any bigger than is absolutely necessary—saving board real estate, compilation time, and money. Stratix III FPGAs target high-end core system processing designs in many applications.

Stratix II and Stratix II GX variant FPGAs introduced the adaptive logic module (ALM) architecture, which uses a high-performance, 8-input fracturable look-up table (LUT) in place of a 4 input LUT, and which is found in Altera's newest high-end FPGAs today. This second-generation high-performance FPGA family includes best-in-class 6.375-Gbps transceiver-based variant devices. These Stratix II GX FPGAs are available in volume and are still highly recommended for new designs.

Stratix and the Stratix GX variants are the original members of the Stratix FPGA series. This high-performance FPGA family introduced DSP hard IP blocks along with Altera's ubiquitous TriMatrix on-chip memory and flexible I/O structures.

Table 2 compares the features of the FPGAs in the Stratix series. 

Table 2. Comparison of FPGAs in the Stratix Series

Feature Stratix IV E Stratix III L Stratix III E Stratix II Stratix
Equivalent Logic Elements 105,600 to 681,100 47,500 to 338,000 47,500 to 254,400 15,600 to 179,400 10,570 to 79,040
Adaptive Logic Modules 42,240 to 272,440  19,000 to 135,200  19,000 to 101,760  6,240 to 71,760  N/A
Total RAM (Kbits) 8,244 to 22,977 1,836 to 16,272 5,328 to 14,688 410 to 9,163 899 to 7,253
Max 18 x 18 Multipliers 512 to 1,360 216 to 576 384 to 896 48 to 384 24 to 88
LVDS Data Rates (Mbps) 150 to 1,600 124 to 1,250 125 to 1,250 125 to 1,000 840
LVDS Channels (Rx/Tx) 56/56 to 132/132 56/56 to 132/132 56/56 to 112/112 38/38 to 152/156 44/44 to 80/80

Table 3 compares the features of the transceiver-based FPGAs in the Stratix series.

Table 3. Comparison of Transceiver-Based FPGAs in the Stratix Series

Feature Stratix IV GX Stratix II GX Stratix GX
Equivalent Logic Elements 72,600 to 531,200 15,600 to 179,400 10,570 to 79,040
Adaptive Logic Modules 29,040 to 212,480 6,240 to 71,760 N/A
Total RAM (Kbits) 6,462 to 20,736 410 to 9,163 899 to 7,253
Max 18 x 18 Multipliers 384 to 1,288 64 to 252 24 to 88
Transceiver Data Rate Range (Mbps) (1) 600 to 8,500 600 to 6,375 500 to 3,1875
Transceiver Channels (1) 8 to 32  4 to 20 4 to 20
Transceiver Data Rate Range (Mbps) (2) 600 to 3,2002 N/A N/A
Transceiver Channels (2) 0 to 16 N/A N/A
PCI Express Hard I/O Blocks 1 to 4 N/A N/A

Notes:

  1. Transceivers with PCS and PMA
  2. Transceivers with PMA only (Stratix IV GX FPGAs only)

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