Tweaks to the design of its existing high-end field-programmable gate array (FPCA) family have let Altera launching a series of cheaper parts aimed at designs that use three of the faster growing serial interconnect standards.rnThe reason for making the Arria GX parts, said Ro Chawla, Altera's European corporate marketing manager, is the rise of the use of serial interconnects in the industrial markets. "PCI Express is finding its way into test-and-measurement and medical equipment," he said. "Gigabit Ethernet is being used in the industrial marketplace. A lot of the industrial customers have legacy models that they need to support." The FPGAs can act as bridges between off-the-shelf processors that support the new protocols and the old industrial networks, such as Profibus.
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