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By Dr Mike Cooke
Fabless programmable logic producer Xilinx has made separate
deals with Toshiba and UMC concerning field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)
built on 65nm technology.
The Toshiba joint development agreement covers
next-generation 65nm FPGAs, which has resulted in successful production of 65nm
FPGA prototype wafers, including actual programmable logic circuits.
Achievement of key 65nm joint development milestones is expected to lead to an
expanded strategic foundry relationship.
Toshiba is among the small number of manufacturers worldwide
that claim to be ready to produce 65nm products in volume, and the company is
moving forward in research and development efforts at 45nm. The possibility of
continuing collaboration to include development of FPGAs based on Toshiba's
45nm process technologies are to be investigated.
Toshiba's successful execution of an October 2004 90nm
manufacturing agreement paved the way for further collaboration at 65nm. Xilinx
90nm Virtex-4 platform FPGAs are produced in volume at Toshiba's 300mm-wafer
manufacturing plant at Oita, in Kyushu, Japan.
Prototype wafers at 65nm, including actual programmable
logic circuitry, have also been announced from work between Xilinx and its
long-standing manufacturing partner, Taiwan foundry UMC. The wafers were
produced at UMC's 300mm facility in Tainan, Taiwan. In addition, Xilinx and UMC
announced that they are in the early stages of process definition for future
development of 45nm FPGAs.
For more than a decade, Xilinx has used UMC as its primary
manufacturer for high-volume production of its programmable chips, most
recently at 90nm. UMC claims to lead all foundries in total 90nm wafers shipped.
A total of four 90nm FPGA families and 28 devices are being manufactured by
UMC, including Virtex-4, Spartan-3E, Spartan-3L and Spartan-3.
Xilinx pushes the performance of its products through use of
the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes, being first to 150nm
in 2001, 130nm in 2002, and 90nm in 2003. FPGAs are used by some semiconductor manufacturers
to prove and test advanced manufacturing processes, due to their regular
structure and re-programmability. (Others prefer SRAM memory structures, for
similar reasons.) Defects can be more easily identified and isolated during
manufacturing than with traditional, fixed semiconductor device architectures.
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