Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have long been the secret weapon of digital design engineers, offering unparalleled flexibility and the ability to implement custom logic with speed; however, they have often come with a high barrier to entry: complex design software, steep learning curves, and costs that made them unsuitable for high-volume applications.
Building on the success of the GreenPAK™ business model, Renesas introduced the ForgeFPGA™ family with a completely new approach to low-density FPGAs. ForgeFPGA represents a fundamental shift in how FPGAs can be integrated into electronic designs. This new family directly addresses the common challenges that have traditionally slowed down the development and limited the broader adoption of FPGAs.
Let's explore how ForgeFPGA is changing the game, making FPGA development faster, easier, and more accessible than ever before. A major challenge in FPGA adoption is the complexity of traditional development tools, which often require engineers to master hardware description languages (HDLs) like Verilog or VHDL. This steep learning curve can discourage analog and firmware engineers, who would otherwise benefit from the flexibility of FPGAs. ForgeFPGA addresses this barrier with the free Go Configure™ Software Hub and its ForgeFPGA Workshop. Its standout feature is a dual-mode development environment: engineers can choose between writing HDL code or using an intuitive schematic capture interface to visually design their logic. This approach is not only free and user-friendly, but also specifically optimized for low-cost, low-power FPGAs. As a result, ForgeFPGA opens FPGA design to a much wider audience and supports rapid prototyping in cost-sensitive projects. It offers more capabilities than traditional, HDL-only, and often expensive toolchains.
Development Process Made Easy
The ForgeFPGA Workshop is an integrated development environment (IDE) designed for creating, simulating, and programming ForgeFPGA designs. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for every stage of the FPGA development process—from writing Verilog code to debugging on hardware platforms.
The ForgeFPGA Workshop streamlines the FPGA development by letting users start new projects in Verilog, import or export design files, and keep everything organized in a structured directory. Its editor supports both code and visual schematic design, making it easy to prototype and iterate. The built-in synthesis tool quickly turns designs into bitstreams for programming, while simulation and verification features help ensure everything works before hardware deployment. Tools for IO planning, timing analysis, and debugging, including logic and protocol analyzers, simplify hardware integration and troubleshooting.
The ForgeFPGA Workshop is designed with user experience in mind, featuring an intuitive interface where the main menu, toolbar, and control panels provide quick access to all essential tools and reports. The software streamlines error handling by displaying synthesis, bitstream, and simulation logs in a dedicated messages panel, with clickable error messages for fast debugging. Users can tailor their workflows through customizable project and user settings, including tool paths, editor preferences, and simulation formats. Additionally, the software offers direct access to documentation and support resources, such as datasheets, application notes, and user guides, all from within the platform.
ForgeFPGA's development process is supported by a hardware platform compatible with all products in the family. The ForgeFPGA Go Configure Development Board is a full-featured platform designed for comprehensive development, emulation, and testing, making it ideal for advanced prototyping and debugging. Each part number has a compatible socket card that allows the user to program the parts on the fly for initial prototyping.
Order the development boards and the relevant socket cards with samples
Power and Cost: Opening the Door to New Applications
In the past, the cost and power consumption of FPGAs often relegated them to niche, high-end applications. The prevailing industry shift towards smaller, battery-powered, and IoT devices demands a new approach to silicon. The ForgeFPGA excels here with critical differentiators:
Ultra-Low Power Consumption
With devices that boast standby currents in the ~20μA range, these FPGAs are a perfect fit for power-sensitive applications like wearables, smart sensors, and other battery-operated devices, where every microamp counts. This is achieved through a unique power-gating structure that dramatically reduces leakage current when the device is in sleep mode. This low power draw extends battery life, a crucial metric for consumer satisfaction and product viability.
Aggressive Cost Point
Renesas is targeting a price point of ~$0.50 for 1K LUT devices in high volumes. This changes the economic equation entirely, making FPGAs a viable, cost-effective option for a massive range of consumer and industrial applications, where they were previously considered too expensive. This enables design teams to incorporate programmable logic into bill-of-materials (BoM) sensitive designs without fear of ballooning costs.
The Ecosystem Advantage
Designing with disparate components from different vendors often leads to integration headaches, compatibility issues, and a prolonged development cycle. As part of the broader Renesas portfolio, ForgeFPGA is designed to work in harmony with the company's microcontrollers, analog components, power management ICs, and timing devices.
Practical Advice for Your Next Project
If you're an engineer wrestling with a design challenge, a low-density FPGA could be the answer.
- Need more IO or protocol bridging? ForgeFPGA lets you flexibly expand microcontroller pins or convert between interfaces like SPI, UART, I2C, and PWM – no board redesign required.
- Facing hardware mismatches? Implement custom glue logic or bus arbitration in the FPGA to buffer signals and adapt logic levels between incompatible components.
- Want smarter LED control? Offload LED matrix management and light animations to the FPGA, freeing up your MCU for other tasks.
- Need real-time sensor processing? Handle filtering, thresholding, and signal conditioning right on the FPGA for fast, reliable sensor data.
- Looking to boost security? Add hardware-based authentication or obfuscation for a low-power security layer in your IoT or consumer device.
- Supporting unique serial protocols? ForgeFPGA can implement custom or legacy communications, perfect for retrofits or proprietary systems.
- Exploring edge AI? Run ultra-lightweight reasoning alongside your MCU for basic, low-power AI at the edge.
By combining an approachable software experience with market-leading power and cost efficiencies, ForgeFPGA is demystifying FPGA design and making it a practical, everyday tool in an engineer's arsenal.
Ready to see how the ForgeFPGA can improve your next design? Explore the Go Configure Software Hub and related resources on renesas.com to start your project today.
