Intel has added a second foundry customer – Tabula - which has a programmable logic technology which it calls Spacetime incorporated in a product called 3PLD.
Intel’s first foundry customer was another programmable logic company called Achronix.
Both Achronix and Tabula are in the early stages of their development and their volumes will be low.
Tabula calls its multi-GHz reconfigurable chips 3D because they reconfigure
so quickly that logic elements can be re-used in the same circuit design. The third dimension is therefore the time while the device reconfigures.
Tabula will use Intel’s 22nm finfet process. No date is given when it will start to do so. Intel’s 22nm was due late last year. Now first products on it are slated for April and volume for July.
Intel has an operation called Intel Custom Foundry which has raised speculation that Intel may go seriously into the foundry business to defray the expense of its fabs.
However two small users of wafers like Achronix and Tabula don’t really confirm that Intel is serious about developing a foundry business.
It may mean that Intel is trying to get back into the programmable logic business- which it tried to get into in the 1980s and later pulled out of.
Or Intel may see a need for putting progammable fabrics on its SOCs and this is a way to gain the capability.