Lattice Sees Bright Future in Booming FPGA Market

While some sectors of the electronics market have seen growth halt over the past years, the demand for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has remained strong as customers demand specialized solutions to their design needs. Last week, Lattice delivered an upbeat forecast in its 2023 Analyst and Investor Day.

The company’s optimism is reflected in its 2022 fiscal year, where Lattice posted earnings of $178.8 million, or $1.27 per diluted share, on sales of $660.3 million, up from $95 million, or 67 cents per diluted share, on sales of $515.3 million. In its first quarter of 2023, Lattice earned $55.9 million or 40 cents per diluted share on sales of $184.3 million, marking the 12 consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth.

In its recent analyst presentation, Lattice noted that its Communications & Computing and Industrial & Automation segments have enjoyed consecutive quarters of growth. Together, those sectors account for about 90% of the company’s revenue, with the remainder in consumer where Lattice focuses on higher-end applications. The company projects the addressable market for FPGAs to reach $10 billion by 2028, with growth due to sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics, automotive electronics, and hardware platform security.

With FPGA demand slated to continue growing, Jim Anderson, President and CEO of Lattice, said he has raised the company’s growth targets to 15 to 20% annually. While much of that growth will occur in the small FPGA market where Lattice has long had a market-leading position, Anderson also expects additional growth from the mid-range FPGA market.

Avant Slated for Key Role

Last December, Lattice entered the mid-FPGA market with its Avant FPGA. Avant is aimed at the growing AI market with edge-based computing connecting numerous sensors and devices. According to the company, Avant consumes up to 2.5 times less power than similar class competitive devices, and provides up to twice the performance of similar class competitive devices while occupying a smaller form factor.

More recently, Lattice announced its Lattice MachX05T family of advanced control system FPGAs, based on the company’s Nexus platform. These FPGAs MachXO5T-NX FPGAs feature advanced connectivity with PCIe®, increased logic and memory resources, and enhanced security. They provide up to 3.4 times more embedded memory than competing FPGAs of a similar class, up to 100 times more dedicated user flash memory, and up to 100 times lower soft error rate.

Spencer Chin is a Senior Editor for Design News covering the electronics beat. He has many years of experience covering developments in components, semiconductors, subsystems, power, and other facets of electronics from both a business/supply-chain and technology perspective. He can be reached at [email protected].