Xilinx unleashes triad of low-power, 28nm FPGA families with very promising characteristics for memory interfacing

By _Cadence - Denali Memory Report

June 22, 2010

Today, Xilinx unveiled three new series of FPGAs all based on 28nm process technology from Samsung and TSMC. The three families are called the Virtex-7, Kintex-7, and Artix-7 series. All three FPGA families feature programmable I/O drivers with I/O voltages as low as 1.2V, which theoretically permits the use of all advanced, single-ended SDRAM interfaces such as the low-voltage LPDDR2 and high-speed DDR3-2133 memory interfaces. Devices in the low-end Artix-7 FPGA family, packaged in low-cost wire-bond packages, have as many as 450 I/O pins. The middle Kintex-7 FPGA family, available in flip-chip packages, have as many as 500 I/O pins and the high-end Virtex-7 FPGA devices have as many as 1200 I/O pins. The Artix-7 and Kintex-7 FPGAs are largely differentiated by performance (with some larger Kintex-7 devices offered) and unit price. The Kintex-7 and Virtex-7 FPGAs are differentiated by gate and I/O capacity and unit price.