Xilinx has started general sampling of its 65nm FPGA family Virtex-5 and expects to be in volume production of the first version of Virtex-5 at the beginning of next year.

Asked how much of a lead that gave Xilinx over its chief rival Altera, Per Holmberg, director of programmable digital systems marketing at Xilinx replied: “Six, maybe nine months.” Xilinx' CEO, Wim Roelandts pointed out: “TSMC [Altera’s foundry] is focusing on low power. UMC [Xilinx’s foundry] is focused on high performance.” It is the high-end parts which usually move first to a new generation of process technology.

Compared to the 90nm Virtex-4, the performance of the 65nm Virtex-5 is 30 per cent higher. The dynamic power of Virtex-5 is 35 per cent lower than Virtex-4, which is achieved by a combination of using hard IPs, and by moving from 1.2V to 1V. The static power of Virtex-5 is about the same as Virtex-4, thanks to Xilinx’s triple oxide approach and moves to strained silicon for the wafers and to nickel silicide for the dielectric material.

Roelandts said that the double foundry strategy of Xilinx was working well. “The technology development risks are enormous,” said Roelandts, "having two foundries gives you some level of redundancy in case one foundry loses the recipe. We taped out at UMC and Toshiba at the same time, and they delivered working silicon within one week of each other.”

For Virtex-5, Xilinx has come up with a strategy of fragmenting the family. There are four Virtex-5 product types, which Xilinx calls ‘domains’. “When you add more hard cores to FPGA some people need them and some don’t,” explained Roelandts. “How do you create a system family to satisfy all the customer needs? You can’t do that. So that’s why we came up with the idea of domains."

The first domain is the logic product, called LX, now in general sampling. Second, due in the second half of this year, is the LXT which is for logic with serial connectivity.

Also due in the second half of his year is the third domain, called SXT, for DSP with serial connectivity. The fourth domain, to be launched in the first half of next year, is called FXT, for embedded processing with serial connectivity.

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