GOWIN Goes High-Throughput with Its Arora-V GW5AT-15 FPGA, Targets 4k Video Applications

GOWIN Semiconductor has announced a new entry in its Arora-V family of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips, the GW5AT-15 — which, it says, offers enough Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) throughput to handle 4k-resolution displays and comes with an integrated hard-core MIPI C-PHY/D-PHY: the GOWIN GW5AT-15.

"The market for high-speed display and camera interfaces has been stuck with a choice of high-end FPGAs which are large, expensive and power-hungry, or low-end FPGAs with inadequate SerDes performance," claims GOWIN chief executive officer Jason Zhu. "Our latest Arora-V device perfectly fills the gap, offering a unique hard-core MIPI C-PHY and D-PHY capability in a small and highly affordable FPGA."

The new FPGA includes 630kb of block RAM (BRAM) and 118kb of shadow RAM, GOWIN has confirmed, along with the option of adding 8MB or 16MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and 1MB of NOR flash storage, if required. The chip offers 15,120 logic elements, but it's the SerDes throughput which GOWIN is pushing: up to 12.5Gb/s, in the WLCSP-packaged variant of the part.

The chip's high-speed connectivity includes, the company has confirmed, three-lane MIPI C-PHY running at up to 5.75Gb/s per lane, four-lane D-PHY running at up to 2.5Gb/s per lane, and four lanes of PCI Express Gen. 3. There are also on-chip PHYs for USB 3.x and USB 2.x, meaning no logic elements need be wasted to add the connectivity into a design.

More information on the new GW5AT-15, and the rest of the Arora-V family, can be found on the GOWIN website; the company says the part is now available for sampling, but has not publicly disclosed pricing.