Want to roll your own processor, but can’t afford the fabbing of an ASIC? Well, look no further. Xilinx has just announced its Virtex-7 2000T that is built around no less than 6.8 billion transistors, giving it 2 million logic gates that is again roughly equivalent to 20 million ASIC gates.
Xilinx has manufactured the ASIC by using stacking and thereby doubling the usual maximum capacity found in 28nm devices according to a press release from the company.
With this new device AICs get another run for the money as development of smaller series is a lot cheaper in FPGA technology and the time to market is also significantly shorter. For larger volumes then ASIC is still cheaper. The Virtex-7 2000T can also be used as an ASIC replacement where the ASICs are not widely used and running out of stock.
Likewise the Virtex-7 2000T can also be used for prototyping and ASIC emulation before the final design is committed to an ASIC. With its stacking technology Xilinx has shown that here is still more life left in Moore’s law.S|A
Mads Ølholm
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