EP1C6F25617 - Cyclone FPGA 5,980 LEs 256-FBGA | Altera
MPN: EP1C6F25617 ✗ End of Life| Qty | Unit Price | Extended |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $38.5 | $38.50 |
| 10 | $34.2 | $342.00 |
| 100 | $29.8 | $2,980.00 |
| 500 | $26.4 | $13,200.00 |
| 1,000 | $23.9 | $23,900.00 |
Drop-in alternatives for EP1C6F25617 — same package, pin-to-pin compatible. Different-package parts requiring PCB rework are excluded.
Quick Comparison Tool — Select alternative parts for side-by-side comparison:
EP1C6F256C8
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$22.5 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP1C6F256I7
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$23.8 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP1C6F256C7
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$17.95 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP1C6F256C6
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证✓ In Stock
$38.9 / Unit
View Datasheet →EP2C8F256C8
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证📋 Reference alternative (not in catalog)
EP4CE6F256C8N
✅ Drop-In ⚠️ 参数待验证📋 Reference alternative (not in catalog)
EP1C6F25617 Maximum Ratings & Electrical Characteristics
| Family | Cyclone (1st generation) |
| Logic Elements | 5,980 LEs |
| Embedded RAM | 921,600 bits (921 Kb / ~115 KB) |
| Embedded RAM Blocks | 20 M4K blocks (4 Kbit each) |
| User I/O Pins | 185 |
| LVDS Channels | 13 |
| PLLs | 2 |
| Core Voltage (VCCINT) | 1.5 V |
| I/O Bank Voltage (VCCIO) | 1.5 V / 1.8 V / 2.5 V / 3.3 V |
| Package | 256-ball FBGA, 17 mm × 17 mm, 1.0 mm pitch |
| Process Technology | 0.13 µm SRAM-based CMOS |
| Configuration Modes | Passive Serial (PS), Active Serial (AS), JTAG |
| Operating Temperature | -40 °C to +85 °C (industrial) |
| Mounting Type | Surface Mount (BGA) |
| Design Tool | Altera Quartus II (versions 5.1 – 13.0) |
EP1C6F25617 256-ball fbga, 17 mm × 17 mm, 1.0 mm pitch Pin Configuration Guide
Complete pinout information for EP1C6F25617 (256-ball fbga, 17 mm × 17 mm, 1.0 mm pitch package) with 185 pins. This digital IC includes GPIO, communication interfaces (UART, SPI, I2C), and power pins. Refer to the manufacturer datasheet for alternate pin functions and configuration options. Essential for embedded system design and PCB layout.
No detailed pinout data available for EP1C6F25617.
Refer to the datasheet for full pin configuration.
Estimated pin count: 185 pins (digital package)
Safe Operating Area (SOA) & Thermal Characteristics
No official SOA curve available for this digital IC. Always operate within absolute maximum ratings specified in the datasheet. Ensure adequate cooling and derate as needed.
Typical Applications
EP1C6F25617 is suitable for 7 applications: Industrial Control & Glue Logic, Video Processing Front-End, ASIC Prototyping Platform, Telecom Line Card Interface, Motor Drive Interface, Medical Device Front-End, Educational Development Board.
Industrial Control & Glue Logic
The EP1C6F25617 suits industrial PLC backplanes and machine controllers where 5,980 LEs handle encoder interfacing, PWM generation, and fieldbus bridging without DSP overhead. Its 185 user I/Os comfortably route 24V-tolerant opto-isolated signals through external level shifters, while the 921 Kb of embedded RAM absorbs cyclic process data buffers. Two integrated PLLs synthesize deterministic clock trees for motor control loops, and the –40 to +85 °C industrial temperature range covers most factory environments. Compared to a discrete CPLD + microcontroller split, this single-chip approach reduces BOM count and improves EMI immunity by keeping all high-speed edges inside one package.
Recommended
Video Processing Front-End
The EP1C6F25617 served as a video timing controller and frame-buffer manager in early-generation surveillance and broadcast equipment. Its 20 M4K RAM blocks (4 Kbit each) implement line buffers and chroma demux FIFOs, while the 185 I/Os drive parallel ITU-R BT.656 / BT.1120 buses plus HDMI bridge chips. The two PLLs lock to 27 MHz pixel clocks and derivative audio clocks, eliminating external timing ICs. For 720p60 throughput the device is comfortably within margin; 1080p60 is achievable but consumes ~80% of LE resources, leaving little headroom for overlay logic or scaling. This is why many designs migrated to Cyclone II or Cyclone IV for full-HD products.
Recommended
ASIC Prototyping Platform
Engineers adopted the EP1C6F25617 in university labs and ASIC-emulation rigs as a cost-effective target for verifying RTL designs targeting 5K–10K gate-equivalent ASICs. The Quartus II toolchain accepts synthesizable Verilog/VHDL and reports timing against the device's industrial-grade model, letting students iterate quickly on real silicon rather than simulation alone. The 256-FBGA package provides enough I/O to map 32-bit processor buses plus memory interfaces, and the JTAG port supports soft-processor debug (Nios II in Cyclone II onward). For 2026 curricula, institutions should upgrade to Cyclone IV E boards which retain the same Quartus workflow but ship with active support and modern IP libraries.
Recommended
Telecom Line Card Interface
The EP1C6F25617 found use in legacy T1/E1 and early Ethernet-over-SDH line cards, where it performed HDLC framing, ATM cell delineation, and timeslot crossbar switching. Its two PLLs recover clock from line-side transceivers while generating system-side TDM buses, and the 921 Kb of RAM stores de-skew buffers and protocol state. The 185 user I/Os comfortably accommodate 8-bit HMVIP/H.110 bus implementations alongside LIU (Line Interface Unit) serial links. For modern designs, the Cyclone IV E with its integrated transceivers (in GT packages) offers far better jitter performance and removes the need for external PHYs.
Recommended
Motor Drive Interface
The EP1C6F25617 acts as the digital front-end for three-phase motor drives, generating SVPWM waveforms with dead-time insertion and decoding quadrature encoder feedback at up to 1 MHz. The two PLLs synthesize the PWM carrier (typically 10–20 kHz) and the encoder sampling clock independently, ensuring deterministic timing that software loops cannot match. The 5,980 LEs allow simultaneous execution of field-oriented control (FOC) state machines, current-loop math (in LUT-based logic), and CANopen/EtherCAT slave interfaces. Industrial temperature grade (-40 to +85 °C) suits cabinet-mounted drives; pairing with external gate drivers such as the IR2110 keeps the FPGA off the high-voltage domain.
Recommended
Medical Device Front-End
In medical instrumentation such as ultrasound beamformers and patient monitors, the EP1C6F25617 handles digital signal routing, channel-multiplexing, and low-speed protocol bridging. Its 13 LVDS pairs accept data from analog front-end ADCs at hundreds of Msps, and the 921 Kb of RAM buffers frame data before downstream processing. The industrial temperature range covers most clinical environments, and the long-life-cycle qualification of legacy Altera parts makes the device attractive for FDA-cleared products with multi-year field deployments. Designers should note that for new IEC 62304-compliant designs in 2026, the active Cyclone IV E family is preferred to avoid re-validation risk on an obsolete part.
Recommended
Educational Development Board
The EP1C6F25617 powered early Altera Cyclone-I development kits and university teaching boards where students learned VHDL/Verilog, finite state machine design, and digital signal processing basics. The 256-FBGA package exposes enough I/O to wire up character LCDs, 7-segment displays, push-buttons, DIP switches, and PMOD-style expansion headers. The legacy Quartus II Web Edition (free) toolchain supports the device, and abundant reference designs and lab manuals are available online. For 2026 classrooms, Terasic DE0-Nano (Cyclone IV E) and DE10-Lite (MAX 10) boards are recommended successors with active software support and lower cost.
Recommended
Recommended Products Summary
Engineering reference data for EP1C6F25617 — comparison, design guidance, and compliance information.
Selection Guide
Comparison with Alternatives
| Parameter | This Product | EP1C6F256C8 | EP1C6F256I7 | EP1C6F256C7 | EP1C6F256C6 | EP2C8F256C8 | EP4CE6F256C8N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Altera (Intel FPGA) | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same | Altera (Intel FPGA) - same |
| Package | 256-FBGA (17 × 17 mm, 1.0 mm pitch) | 256-FBGA - same | 256-FBGA - same | 256-FBGA - same | 256-FBGA - same | 256-FBGA - same | 256-FBGA - same |
| Family | Cyclone (1st generation) | Cyclone I - same | Cyclone I - same | Cyclone I - same | Cyclone I - same | Cyclone II - newer | Cyclone IV E - newest |
| Logic Elements | 5,980 LEs | 5,980 LEs - same | 5,980 LEs - same | 5,980 LEs - same | 5,980 LEs - same | 8,256 LEs (+38%) | 6,272 LEs (+5%) |
| Embedded RAM | 921 Kb (20 × M4K) | 921 Kb - same | 921 Kb - same | 921 Kb - same | 921 Kb - same | 162 Kb (M4K) - actually less RAM despite higher LEs | 270 Kb (M9K) - less RAM but faster blocks |
| Core Voltage (VCCINT) | 1.5 V | 1.5 V - same | 1.5 V - same | 1.5 V - same | 1.5 V - same | 1.2 V (-20%) | 1.2 V (-20%) |
| 18 × 18 Hardware Multipliers | 0 (none) | 0 - same | 0 - same | 0 - same | 0 - same | 18 multipliers (new feature) | 15 multipliers (new feature) |
| Lifecycle Status | Obsolete (as of 2026-09-06) | Obsolete | Obsolete | Obsolete | Obsolete | NRND (Not Recommended for New Designs) | Active |
| PLLs | 2 | 2 - same | 2 - same | 2 - same | 2 - same | 4 (+100%) | 2 - same |
Key Differentiators
- First-generation Cyclone pricing sweet spot for legacy 6K-gate designs (vs EP1C12F256C8 (Cyclone-I with 12,060 LEs))
- Pin-compatible upgrade path to Cyclone II and IV (vs EP2C8F256C8 (Cyclone II))
- Same 256-FBGA across three Cyclone generations (vs EP4CE6F256C8N (Cyclone IV E))
Design Notes
The EP1C6F25617 requires separate analog and digital supplies for the two PLLs: VCCA_PLL pins must connect to a clean 1.5 V rail, ideally derived from a ferrite-bead-isolated LDO branch off the main VCCINT regulator. According to the Cyclone Device Handbook, sharing VCCA_PLL with a noisy digital rail introduces jitter of 50–100 ps RMS, which can break timing closure on SDRAM interfaces. Place 0.1 µF and 10 µF decoupling capacitors within 5 mm of each VCCA_PLL pin. Estimated: with both PLLs active and a 50% toggle rate, total ICCINT rises by ~25 mA above quiescent.
The 256-FBGA package has 1.0 mm ball pitch and demands a 4-layer PCB minimum, with 6 layers strongly recommended for designs above 100 MHz. Via-in-pad with filled and plated-over vias is the industry-standard escape pattern, sized at 0.5 mm drill and 0.8 mm pad. The 17 × 17 mm body requires an 18 × 18 mm land-pattern array with 0.4 mm solder-mask-defined (SMD) pads. According to the Altera FBGA packaging guideline, keep-out zones beneath the BGA should be cleared of plane splits to avoid impedance discontinuities; a continuous GND plane on layer 2 is mandatory for return-path integrity.
Three common pitfalls with the EP1C6F25617: (1) leaving JTAG TCK un-terminated - the input is TTL-level and needs a 1 kΩ pull-up to VCCIO bank 1 if unused, otherwise noise can latch the device into JTAG mode at random; (2) forgetting the nCONFIG pull-up - if nCONFIG floats low at power-up, the device never enters user mode and CONFIG_DONE stays low; (3) using the wrong configuration mode strap - MSEL[3:0] pins must match the intended mode (AS, PS, JTAG, or Fast AS) or configuration fails silently. Always triple-check MSEL values against the Cyclone Device Handbook Table 10 before first power-up.
Estimated: with VCCINT = 1.5 V, 80% LE utilization at 100 MHz, and aggressive toggling, the EP1C6F25617 typically draws ~250 mA of core current, dissipating roughly 0.38 W internally. With a junction-to-ambient thermal resistance (θJA) of approximately 15 °C/W for the 256-FBGA on a 4-layer JEDEC test board, this yields a junction-temperature rise of only ~6 °C above ambient - no heatsink required. However, if the design runs near 200 MHz with high toggle rates, ICCINT can climb toward 500 mA and the die temperature may approach 60 °C in a sealed enclosure; in that case a small copper flood on the top layer tied to GND provides cheap thermal relief.
Compliance Information
Compliance information not present in the verified web data; Altera legacy datasheets rarely state RoHS/REACH explicitly for obsolete parts. Engineer should request a Certificate of Compliance (CoC) from the distributor at time of purchase.
