High Performance/Throughput, Low Latency and Low Power Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio (CR)

FPGAs have become one of the most popular implementation media for digital circuits on account of their low NRE costs, field programmability, and time to market advantages over ASICs. However, FPGAs'greatest strength -- reconfigurability -- is also the source of their low performance and high power consumption. GoofyFoot Labs proposes the AMP 3D-FPGA, an innovative FPGA architecture, that achieves ASIC-like performance with significantly lower power consumption than conventional FPGA architectures. The AMP 3D-FPGA achieves 1.7-GHz peak performance while simultaneously reducing standby power consumption by 70% and dynamic power consumption by nearly 50% over other 65-nm FPGAs making it suitable for high performance and mobile domains. Additionally, the AMP 3D-FPGA provides added benefit to DoD applications because its innovative architecture improves its anti-tamper properties by making it more resilient to side-channel and fault attacks. In the Phase I program, GoofyFoot Labs will develop the AMP architecture and demonstrate its power and performance improvements.