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Xilinx to provide super fast FPGA
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Xilinx Inc. today claimed to be the first PLD vendor to have implemented 10Gbit/sec. technology using a standard digital CMOS process.
That the company has developed a test chip, with plans to productize the design later this year, is a significant achievement, according to Cary Snyder, senior analyst with Forward Concepts.
“It is a tremendous achievement from a technology standpoint -- that the fundamental technology is there and it works in CMOS, that they don’t need any elaborate silicon technologies to implement it,” Snyder said.
The ability to implement 10G on CMOS is a difficult one. According to Per Holmberg, Xilinx’s director of programmable systems marketing, it requires dealing with complex analog and mixed-signal design techniques, plus an understanding of and ability to manage noise and jitter problems. State of the art CAD tools and design methodologies are required, in addition to test, characterization and production level testing. Xilinx has been able to achieve all this in-house through its acquisition of RocketChips Inc. in November 2000. That company now forms the basis of Xilinx’s communications technology division, which employs over 50 former RocketChips scientists.
“There is a trend in the industry now for lots of standards to move from parallel to serial interfaces,” Holmberg said. “What is significant for us is two different forces. One is the requirement to reduce system cost moving forward. The requirement for increasing performance and bandwidth has not stopped. There are a lot of multimedia applications, video on demand for example, that are still driving the need for higher bandwidths. The combination of this driving down the cost as well as increasing the bandwidth is the reason for people to move to serial.”
10Gbit/sec. products have been on the market for some time, with networking companies like Broadcom Corp. well-established in this space. But products are very application specific, Holmberg said. If Xilinx can migrate its technology to low cost, mass-produced FPGAs, not only should the industry see a significant ramp in 10Gbit/sec. applications but also Xilinx will have succeeded penetrating a lucrative niche market.
“[Xilinx would be] able to amortize the cost of developing this across a number of less mature markets that don’t necessarily have the sales volume that would justify the release of an ASIC or ASSP,” Snyder said.
Xilinx is a firm believer of interface technology transitioning from parallel architectures to serial architectures. Its Virtex-II Pro family of FPGAs are already available for 3.125Gbit/sec. transceivers, and Xilinx supports the key serial connectivity standards PCI Express and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (XAUI). Where exactly they will steer the 10Gbit/sec. CMOS technology remains to be seen, but Snyder said it should give Rambus Inc.’s RaSer serial interface technology with a run for its money.
By: DocMemory
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