Xilinx 7 Series: A game changer for FPGAs?
Posted by Dave Orecchio on Tue, Jul 06, 2010 @ 10:41 AM
Last month Xilinx took the wraps off its next generation FPGA family, the 7 Series. There were many exciting advancements included in the roadmap laid out by the company as it moves its state of the art devices to 28nm (on TSMC and Samsung processes). For us at GateRocket, we are impressed with the huge leap in capacity that the move to 28nm will enable – in some cases doubling the amount of logic gates for designers to work with. Virtex7, for example, offers 2 million logic cells. With that kind of capacity, it is inevitable that the verification and debug challenges for FPGA designers will require an advanced and efficient approach. More on that in a bit.
First a recap of the 7 Series.
Interestingly, the Xilinx FPGA family now consists of three components, instead of the traditional Virtex/Spartan product lines. The new triumvirate consists of Virtex at the high end, and newly named Kintex as the mid range option, and Atrix as the lower cost alternative. It’s good to see Xilinx continue to expand the number of options and overall flexibility for its product line, tailoring the products for specific needs like cost, performance, power, etc.
Family naming conventions aside, the technology under the hood of the new architecture and devices is impressive. First of all, Xilinx continues its Targeted Design Platform strategy with the 7 Series, which helps designers optimize FPGA for special applications like wireless or broadband or DSP. The new family looks to offer a smooth transition path from previous generations Xilinx devices, too.
Most importantly in terms of breaking into new markets, Xilinx appears to have cracked the code on delivering truly low power solutions for programmable devices. The new family reduces power by up to 50% over previous generations, positioning it very well for demanding consumer and mobile markets that require low power consumption characteristics. In fact Xilinx CEO Moshe Gavrielov says that with the low power capabilities of the 28-nm family, the market opportunity for FPGAs could be twice as large as what is if for the current 45/40nm generation. With the combination of low power, high capacity, and targeted design strategy, Xilinx thinks it can break into markets like LTE basebands, automotive infotainment and more advanced medical applications, for example.
As FPGAs continue their march along the Moore’s Law curve, the needs for specialized and powerful design tools becomes clearer and clearer. The 7 Series is a great advancement and we are excited to be part of how it will transform FPGAs as we know it. For those of you who may not be familiar with our solution, because we use the FPGA to test the FPGA and leverage the vendor tools to place the design into the RocketDrive, we are able to leverage all of Xilinx R&D when we deliver new RocketDrives based on the new family of devices.
In essence, we can offer a solution as soon as the devices are available and we start to see customer demand for them. With our recently-announced support of the Virtex-6 family already seeing much interest in the market, we are excited to move along the technology curve with the FPGA suppliers and let our mutual customers leverage the great potential these devices now offer.