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| Xilinx Unveils Two New Virtex-5 FPGAs |
By BDTI, 4/1/2007
This month Xilinx announced two new members of its Virtex-5 family of FPGAs. The devices will be implemented in a 65 nm process and share the same basic architecture as existing Virtex-5 devices. Unlike previous devices however, Xilinx has optimized the new Virtex-5 FPGAs for higher instead of lower power consumption.
“We’ve made great strides in recent years reducing power consumption and dispelling the myth that FPGAs can’t compete in low-power applications. At the same time, the advantages of FPGAs with high power consumption have been largely ignored. With the heat we’ve been able to generate in these new devices, they’re not only suitable for data processing, but can also act as highly efficient heating elements,” said Xilinx marketing manager Tom Dickens. To illustrate its new strategy, Xilinx also announced its first design win, the George Foreman wireless access point. In addition to supporting wireless standards 802.11a, b, and g, the product will also be a fully functional grill, serving up burgers and steaks just like the popular Foreman grills.
“George likes to call the devices GPGAs, or grill programmable gate arrays, but the devices can be used across a wide range of applications, not just grills” said Dickens, citing a number of target applications such as intelligent seat warmers in cars. “We even have a research vessel in the arctic looking into using banks of FPGAs to do scientific data processing as well as heating the hull for more efficient icebreaking,” reports Dickens.
Xilinx will likely face stiff competition in this new application space from vendors of CPUs and DSPs. In response to the Xilinx announcement, Tony Chachere, product marketing manager for TI’s C6000 family of DSPs said, “FPGAs may be able to cook faster, but our customers report that they just can’t deliver that smooth, smoky flavor you get with a ‘C64x. We expect DSPs to continue being an attractive option for many years to come.” Several days after Xilinx’s announcement of its new FPGAs, TI announced plans for a cooking solution combining an array of DSPs and an optimized cooking library.
The new Virtex-5 devices are currently sampling and priced at $4 in ten trillion unit volumes. Full production is slated for when FPGAs freeze over.
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