Date: 05/06/2012

Xilinx ships 3D FPGA for Nx100G and 400G line card solutions

Xilinx Inc. has announced initial shipments of the Virtex-7 H580T field programmable gate array, the 3D heterogeneous product. Virtex-7 HT devices use Xilinx's sacked silicon interconnect (SSI) technology to deliver the highest bandwidth FPGAs that features up to sixteen 28 Gbps and seventy-two 13.1 Gbps transceivers. Xilinx claims that this is the world's first single-chip solution for addressing key Nx100G and 400G line card applications and functions.

The Virtex-7 HT devices can be combined with Xilinx's 100G gearbox, Ethernet MAC, OTN and Interlaken IP to provide customers with the levels of system integration as they transit to CFP2 optical modules.

Xilinx deliver high capacity devices built on TSMC's 28nm process and unique number of transceivers for better system performance. The heterogeneous implementation of Virtex-7 HT devices enables Xilinx to make independent technology choices for the core FPGA and 28 Gbps transceiver die, which avoids burdening the FPGA with high leakage transistors.

"We were impressed by the low transmit jitter of the Virtex-7 H580T device's 28 Gbps transceivers and also by how quickly we were able to bring up a functioning link when combined with Luxtera's 4x28 Gbps single chip silicon photonic transceiver," said Chris Bergey, vice president of marketing at silicon photonics leader Luxtera Inc. "Xilinx has clearly hit an industry milestone with this device because it allows makers of networking systems to easily overcome the challenges they face to enable more bandwidth."

"With eight 28 Gbps transceivers and ample logic capacity, the Virtex-7 H580T device is the only FPGA that can integrate additional line card functionality so that designers can implement a dual 100G OTN transponder on a single chip," said Mark Gustlin, system architect for wired communications at Xilinx. "Competing ASSP-based solutions will comprise five devices, will remain unavailable for more than a year, will consume at least 40 percent additional power and will cost 50 percent more."

First silicon Virtex-7 H580T FPGAs are shipping to key customers with development tool support available in the recently announced Vivado design suite.