EP4CE55F29I8N - Cyclone IV E FPGA, 55K LE, F29 BGA | Altera
MPN: EP4CE55F29I8N ✓ Active| Qty | Unit Price | Extended |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $285 | $285.00 |
| 10 | $268 | $2,680.00 |
| 100 | $242 | $24,200.00 |
| 500 | $218 | $109,000.00 |
| 1,000 | $195 | $195,000.00 |
EP4CE55F29I8N Overview
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a semiconductor device whose digital logic functionality is defined after manufacturing via a configuration bitstream stored in SRAM. FPGAs sit in the broader hierarchy of programmable logic devices (PLDs) -> complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs) -> FPGAs -> SoC FPGAs, offering far higher logic capacity than CPLDs while consuming less power than ASICs in low-to-medium volumes. The Cyclone IV E family in particular focuses on low static power (~30 mW typical) and a rich set of hard IP such as PLLs, memory controllers, and LVDS I/O.
Key features of the EP4CE55F29I8N include 4 general-purpose PLLs, up to 8 user I/O banks supporting multiple single-ended and differential I/O standards (LVDS, LVTTL, LVCMOS, SSTL, HSTL, PCI), and dedicated hardware multipliers enabling efficient DSP operations up to ~250 MHz. The device supports external memory interfaces including DDR, DDR2, SDR, QDRII, and QDRII+ SRAM. Configuration can be performed via passive serial (AS), active serial (PS), JTAG, or fast passive parallel (FPP) modes, supported by on-chip configuration logic.
Typical applications span industrial motor control, video processing pipelines, automotive driver-assistance subsystems, broadcast equipment, telecom line cards, and low-cost ASIC prototyping. The combination of 55K LEs, ~2.4 Mbits of RAM, and 374 multipliers provides ample headroom for mid-density parallel processing, custom datapaths, and protocol bridging.
When designing with the EP4CE55F29I8N, use Altera's Quartus II (or Intel Quartus Prime) design software for synthesis, place-and-route, timing closure, and bitstream generation. Plan a robust decoupling network (typically 100 nF + 10 uF per power pin) and at least four signal layers to maintain signal integrity on the LVDS and DDR memory interfaces.
This page synthesizes verified distributor pricing, drop-in Altera/Intel same-package alternatives, and practical design guidance not found in a single datasheet excerpt - all cross-referenced against the XAIPART internal database for engineer-grade clarity.
Drop-in alternatives for EP4CE55F29I8N — same package, pin-to-pin compatible. Different-package parts requiring PCB rework are excluded.
Variants in this series
Same-series models that are drop-in compatible with EP4CE55F29I8N (same form factor and footprint) — differing in Process Technology, Package, Operating Temperature, Speed Grade, Mounting Type.
Quick Comparison Tool — Select alternative parts for side-by-side comparison:
EP4CE55F29I8LN
✅ Drop-In✓ In Stock
$165 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP4CE55F29I7N
✅ Drop-In✓ In Stock
$154.8 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP4CE55F29C8N
✅ Drop-In✓ In Stock
$285 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP4CE55F29C9LN
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$23.85 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP4CE55F23I8N
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证📋 Reference alternative (not in catalog)
EP4CE75F29I7N
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$540 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP4CE55F29I8N Maximum Ratings & Electrical Characteristics
| Series | Cyclone IV E |
| Logic Elements (LEs) | 55,856 |
| Embedded Memory (bits) | 2,396,160 |
| Embedded 18x18 Multipliers | 374 |
| General-Purpose PLLs | 4 |
| Package | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) |
| Process Technology | 60 nm low-power CMOS |
| Operating Temperature | -40C to +100C (Industrial grade, suffix I) |
| Supply Voltage Core | 1.0 V (typical, VCCINT) |
| I/O Bank Supply Voltages | 1.2 V / 1.5 V / 1.8 V / 2.5 V / 3.0 V / 3.3 V |
| Configuration Modes | Active Serial (AS), Passive Serial (PS), JTAG, Fast Passive Parallel (FPP) |
| External Memory Interfaces | DDR, DDR2, SDR, QDRII, QDRII+ SRAM |
| Differential I/O Standards | LVDS, RSDS, mini-LVDS, LVPECL (receive) |
| RoHS Status | Compliant |
| Mounting Type | Surface Mount (BGA) |
EP4CE55F29I8N Pin Configuration
| Pin A1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin B1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin C1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin D1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin E1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin F1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 1 |
| Pin G1 | GND — Ground |
| Pin H1 | VCCINT — Core supply voltage (1.0 V typical) |
| Pin J1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin K1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin L1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin M1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin N1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin P1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 2 |
| Pin R1 | VCCIO1 — I/O bank 1 supply voltage (1.2-3.3 V) |
| Pin T1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin U1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin V1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin W1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin Y1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin AA1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 3 |
| Pin AB1 | VCCIO2 — I/O bank 2 supply voltage |
| Pin AC1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
| Pin AD1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
| Pin AE1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
| Pin AF1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
| Pin AG1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
| Pin AH1 | I/O — General-purpose user I/O pin, bank 4 |
Typical Applications
EP4CE55F29I8N is suitable for 6 applications: Industrial Motor Control, Video Processing and Image Pipeline, Telecom Line Card Interface Bridging, Automotive Driver Assistance Subsystem, Broadcast and Pro-Audio Equipment, Low-Cost ASIC Prototyping.
Industrial Motor Control
The EP4CE55F29I8N is well suited to multi-axis industrial motor control inverters, where its 374 embedded 18x18 multipliers enable simultaneous field-oriented control (FOC) loops and 55,856 LEs handle PWM generation, encoder decoding, and safety logic. The industrial -40C to +100C temperature range tolerates cabinet-side thermal stress, while the four on-chip PLLs synthesize jitter-clean PWM carrier clocks from a single crystal. For typical 3-axis servo drives, designers can reserve ~20K LEs per axis for the FOC datapath and still have headroom for STO (safe torque off) state machines and CANopen/EtherCAT slave MACs in soft logic.
Recommended
Video Processing and Image Pipeline
The EP4CE55F29I8N's 2,396,160 bits of embedded RAM (M9K blocks) provide line buffers for real-time video scaling, color-space conversion, and edge detection at HD (1920x1080) rates. LVDS pairs drive camera sensor interfaces up to ~840 Mbps per channel, while the 374 multipliers accelerate convolution kernels for video enhancement. The 780-ball F29 BGA exposes enough user I/O (~328 pins) to support parallel RGB, BT.656, and HDMI bridging in a single device. Designers targeting 4K pipelines often pair this FPGA with an external DDR2 SDRAM for frame buffering.
Recommended
Telecom Line Card Interface Bridging
Telecom access and aggregation line cards rely on the EP4CE55F29I8N to bridge legacy TDM (T1/E1) framers, IMA, and POS-PHY Level-2/3 paths onto modern Ethernet or CPRI backplanes. The 55,856 LEs comfortably fit soft PCS and MAC cores, while the 374 hardware multipliers accelerate Reed-Solomon or LDPC forward error correction. Industrial temp grade supports outdoor cabinet deployments, and the F29 BGA's large pin count accommodates parallel LVDS bus aggregation without external muxing. Quartus II ALTLVDS and ALTDQ/DQS megafunctions simplify PHY bring-up.
Recommended
Automotive Driver Assistance Subsystem
The EP4CE55F29I8N suits entry-level ADAS prototypes such as surround-view stitching, lane-departure warning preprocessing, and rear-camera object classification. Its 374 multipliers accelerate convolutional neural network inference engines for small DNN models (MobileNet, Tiny-YOLO) while the 2.4 Mbits of block RAM caches feature maps and ROIs. The F29 BGA's pin count supports four parallel camera inputs over LVDS plus a CAN-FD bus for vehicle network integration. Designers should pair this part with the lead-free EP4CE55F29I8LN variant for automotive BOM compliance.
Recommended
Broadcast and Pro-Audio Equipment
Broadcast routing matrices, SDI gateways, and digital audio consoles benefit from the EP4CE55F29I8N's combination of LVDS I/O bandwidth and abundant block RAM for sample-rate conversion FIFOs. The four PLLs generate multiple low-jitter audio clocks (44.1, 48, 96, 192 kHz families) for simultaneous AES/EBU and S/PDIF interfacing. With 55K LEs the device holds one or two hundred channels of soft DSP for parametric EQ, dynamics, and mixing. Quartus II IP library provides ready-made SDI PHY and audio CODEC interfaces.
Recommended
Low-Cost ASIC Prototyping
The EP4CE55F29I8N is widely used to prototype and validate ASIC RTL before mask commit. Its 55,856 LEs, 374 hardware multipliers, and 2.4 Mbits of RAM emulate ASIC blocks at speeds sufficient for firmware development and software regression testing. Multiple F29 package FPGAs can be stacked or tiled on a prototyping board to map larger ASICs, and Quartus II's incremental compile flow supports multi-FPGA partitioning. The lead-free F29 package variant is preferred when emulating ASICs that will eventually go to RoHS-restricted end products.
Recommended
Recommended Products Summary
Engineering reference data for EP4CE55F29I8N — comparison, design guidance, and compliance information.
Selection Guide
Comparison with Alternatives
| Parameter | This Product | EP4CE55F29I8LN | EP4CE55F29I7N | EP4CE55F29C8N | EP4CE75F29I7N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Altera | Altera | Altera | Altera | Altera |
| Package | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) - same | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) - same | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) - same | 780-ball FBGA (F29, 29x29 mm) - same |
| Logic Elements (LEs) | 55,856 | 55,856 | 55,856 | 55,856 | 75,408 |
| Embedded Memory (bits) | 2,396,160 | 2,396,160 | 2,396,160 | 2,396,160 | 2,810,880 |
| Embedded 18x18 Multipliers | 374 | 374 | 374 | 374 | 400 |
| Temperature Grade | Industrial (-40C to +100C) | Industrial (-40C to +100C) | Industrial (-40C to +100C) | Commercial (0C to +85C) | Industrial (-40C to +100C) |
| Speed Grade | 8 | 8 | 7 (faster) | 8 | 7 |
| Lead-Free Finish | Yes | Yes (explicit Pb-free OPN) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Configuration Mode | AS, PS, JTAG, FPP | AS, PS, JTAG, FPP | AS, PS, JTAG, FPP | AS, PS, JTAG, FPP | AS, PS, JTAG, FPP |
| General-Purpose PLLs | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Key Differentiators
- Identical silicon with explicit Pb-free OPN (vs EP4CE55F29I8LN)
- ~10% faster Fmax with same silicon (vs EP4CE55F29I7N)
- Industrial temperature range (vs EP4CE55F29C8N)
- 35% more logic capacity for design upsize (vs EP4CE75F29I7N)
Design Notes
The EP4CE55F29I8N requires four separate power rails: VCCINT (1.0 V core), VCCPLL (1.0 V PLL analog, decoupled with ferrite), VCCA (2.5 V PLL regulator), and VCCIO per bank (1.2 V to 3.3 V). Power-on sequencing is not mandatory but recommended: bring VCCINT up before or simultaneously with VCCIO to avoid I/O driving into a partially-powered core. Estimated: at 80% utilization with 200 MHz toggle rate, VCCINT current can approach ~1.5 A; budget 2 A for the core regulator with 100 mV dropout allowance.
Use a minimum 6-layer stack-up for the F29 BGA with dedicated ground and power planes. Place 100 nF X7R decoupling capacitors within 100 mil of every VCCINT/VCCIO ball, supplemented by 10 uF bulk caps per bank. For DDR2 interfaces, route the DQS and DQ net classes with length matching within +/-25 mil and keep impedance at 50 ohm single-ended, 100 ohm differential. Altera's Cyclone IV device handbook pin connection guidelines require tying all unused I/O pins to GND through a weak pulldown or leaving them NC per MSEL settings.
Do not confuse the F29 package (29x29 mm, 780 balls) with the F23 package (23x23 mm, 484 balls) - the F23 is pin-similar at lower density only for EP4CE10/15/22/30, not for EP4CE55. Mixing MSEL[3..0] settings between Fast Passive Parallel and Active Serial modes will brick the configuration. Always include a JTAG header on prototype boards so the configuration bitstream can be recovered via USB-Blaster or Byte-Blaster in case of flash corruption. Estimated: thermal junction-to-ambient resistance theta_JA is approximately 13 C/W with a 4-layer JEDEC test board; with no airflow at 1.5 W dissipation, junction rises ~20 C above ambient.
For LVDS output channels above 500 Mbps, enable on-chip pre-emphasis (programmable via Quartus ALTLVDS megafunction) and add external 100 ohm differential termination at the receiver. Source-synchronous buses (parallel camera, SDR DRAM) should use the on-chip PLL to phase-shift DQS relative to DQ by 90 degrees; for 200 MHz DDR2 this equates to a 1.25 ns shift. Run signal integrity simulation with HyperLynx or Ansys SIwave before committing the PCB to prototype.
Compliance Information
RoHS compliant per Altera material declaration. Not AEC-Q100 qualified (FPGA is not automotive-graded unless explicitly ordered from AEC-Q100 screening). Halogen-free status not explicitly stated in the verified data - marked unknown.
