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1.CycloneIII Device Family Overview

CIII51001-1.3

Lowest System-Cost FPGAs

The Cyclone
® III device family offered by Altera
® is a cost-optimized, memory-rich FPGA family. CycloneIII FPGAs are built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)’s 65-nm low-power (LP) process technology with additional silicon optimizations and software features to minimize power consumption. With this third-generation in the Cyclone series, Altera broadens the number of high volume, cost-sensitive applications that can benefit from FPGAs.This chapter contains the following sections:
â–  “CycloneIII Device Features”
â–  “CycloneIII Device Architecture”
â–  “Reference and Ordering Information”

CycloneIII Device Features

CycloneIII devices offer low-power consumption and increased system integration at reduced cost.

Reduced Cost

CycloneIII devices system costs are based on the following facts:
â–  Staggered I/O ring minimizes die area
â–  Wide range of low-cost packages
â–  Support for low-cost serial flash and commodity parallel flash devices for configuration

Lowest-Power 65-nm FPGA

CycloneIII devices are the lowest-power 65-nm FPGAs designed using TSMC’s 65-nm LP process and Altera’s power aware design flow. CycloneIII devices support hot-socketing operation; therefore, unused I/O banks can be powered down when the devices to which they are connected are turned off. Benefits of the CycloneIII device's low-power operation include:
â–  Extended battery life for portable and handheld applications
â–  Enabled operation in thermally challenged environments
â–  Eliminated or reduced cooling system costs
© October 2008Altera CorporationCyclone III Device Handbook, Volume 1