Xilinx VU19P is the worlds largest FPGA

How it is made is the interesting part

Sep 4, 2019 by

Xilinx logoXilinx recently released the world’s largest FPGA, the 16nm VU19P with more than 9M logic cells. This third generation ‘worlds largest’ is based on their familiar SSI tech which is what SemiAccurate is most interested in.

When you think about interposers and advanced packaging, Xilinx is hardly the first name that springs to mind but it should be. They were one of the first companies to take silicon interposers, SSI or Stacked Silicon Interconnect in their parlance, to mass production with the 7V2000T in 2011.

Xilinx VU19P FPGA

My pics didn’t show the 4 slices well enough

This FPGA had a ‘mere’ 2M or so logic gates from three 28nm FPGA die slices and two 28Gbps SerDes slices for I/O. At the time it was a monster as was the 2nd generation 5.5M gate VU440 from 2015.

Xilinx SSI chart

History lesson for chiplets

Now we have the 9M gate VU19P which uses four identical slices of 16nm silicon, something obviously done for yield and optimization reasons. A gigantic interposer adds a lot of cost but given the market for the largest FPGAs, this is a minor concern if it brings more performance. And it does. If you look at the raw numbers for the VU19P, it is a pretty amazing beast.

Xilinx VU19P family chart

The specs for the whole family

As the biggest FPGA in the family, the VU19P isn’t tailored to one market or another, it looks like it is made for raw compute, or in this case raw simulation. Those ~9M logic cells are complemented by eight PCIe4 8x lanes, each also usable as a PCIe3 16x slot with or without CCIX, and 80 32.75Gbps transceivers. Think of this part as a compute heavy, I/O light, very relatively speaking, FPGA. And it is the biggest one out there, bar none, which means the high end of the market will be owned by Xilinx for the foreseeable future.S|A

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate