Xilinx lines up Series 7 FPGAs

SAN FRANSICO, USA: Programmable logic manufacturer Xilinx has lined up three distinct families of FPGAs at the 28-nm node. The new offerings come about on a level ahead of its earlier two sets of devices. The company has three FPGA families - the high-end Virtex family, the mid-range Kintex family and the low-cost Artix family.

The new generation devices, named Xilinx 7 series FPGAs, will be made available during the first quarter of 2011. The company has said that the Series 7 devices will come with a scalable architecture that would enable customers to migrate 28-nm designs between the product families easier than ever before. Xilinx also pointed out that the 28-nm series 7 devices will feature 50 percent power reduction compared to the company's 40-nm devices and offer capacity of up to 2 million logic cells.

The company’s move to expand to three families of FPGAs at 28-nm has come about as a follow up of a meeting with more than 300 customers over the past two years. Xilinx was told by customers that they were looking at the flexibility to migrate designs between families easily, reduced power consumption to enable higher performance. Besides, they also called for the ability to meet power budgets and a mid-range class of device between Xilinx's traditional high-performance and low-power offerings, a Xilinx official has been quoted as saying.

The new series 7 devices have been enabled to speed up the trend of FPGAs displacing ASICs, the company official added.