by Kevin Morris
Nope, wrong. Guess again.
And… wrong again. Neither Xilinx nor Altera/Intel, despite hovering around 80% combined FPGA market share for the last couple of decades, has shipped the most FPGA devices. That distinction goes to Lattice Semiconductor, and not by a small margin. The reason, of course, is that, in recent years, Lattice has focused on the mid-range and low-end segment of the market, while the better-known programmable logic companies have struggled for supremacy in the largest, most expensive FPGAs, FPGA-SoCs, and similar components.
This strategic emphasis on lower-cost, higher-volume sockets has helped Lattice deliver billions of FPGAs into a wide range of systems across numerous market segments. And, as the capabilities of FPGA technology have increased, Lattice has drafted behind the big two, bringing technology that was considered high-end just a few years ago into much more cost-constrained applications, and then they have taken the technology in new directions with pre-engineered solutions that significantly lower the bar for engineering teams without vast FPGA expertise to take advantage of the technology.