Invented 25 years ago by Xilinx, the fpga has evolved from being used as glue logic to its current role as the centrepiece of many designs. And there are good reasons why the fpga is popular; its reprogrammability being one.
But John Lofton Holt, chairman and chief executive of Achronix, doesn’t believe the technology has evolved particularly well. “Over the period, process technology has improved by a factor of 10, but the fpga is still limited at 500MHz.”
The problem, Holt contends, is clock distribution. “Designers have problems meeting timing closure,” he noted, “and an fpga’s power consumption rises with clock speed.”
His solution is an asynchronous design which, he claims, is the world’s fastest fpga and three times the speed of typical fpgas. “These devices are faster than fpgas available from Altera and Xilinx, as well as standard cell asics.” The technology is based on an idea developed at Cornell University.
Achronix has unveiled its asynchronous technology in the form of the Speedster family, the first member of which is the SPD60. The device is targeted at communications applications and features an array of connectivity, underpinned by a 10.3Gbit/s serdes. According to Yousef Kalilollahi, vp of marketing, this is a ‘very important’ element. “We don’t know of any other fpga company with a 10Gbit serdes.”
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