Xilinx to ship gigantic programmable chip with 9M logic cells

Xilinx announced a field programmable circuit with 35 billion transistors for use in advanced applications, including aerospace and defense. It will be generally available in fall of 2020.

Based on its 16 nanometer (nm) Virtex UltrasScale+ family, the VU19P provides 8.9 million logic cells to make it the highest logic density and I/O count (with 2,072 I/Os) for a single device.

The VU19P is a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), which means a developer can write software that loads onto the chip and executes commands and functions. As such, it can be used to emulate and prototype future ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and system-on-chip (SoC) technologies.  

“The VU19P enables developers to accelerate hardware validation and begin software integration before their ASIC or SoC is available,” said Suit Shah, senior director of product line marketing and management at Xilinx, in a statement released Wednesday. 

It is a third-generation FPGA. The first was the Virtex-7 2000T, followed by the Virtex UltraScale VU440. The new VU19P is 1.6 times larger than its predecessor VU440, which was based on 20 nm technology.

Xilinx will support the VU19P for customers with tools for visibility and debug as well as IP that Xilinx didn’t describe. Designers can optimize the development process with the Xilinx Vivado Design Suite to lower costs and speed up time to market for their creations.

Arm said in a statement that the new VU19P will help accelerate design, development and validation of its upcoming technologies. 

In addition to its 8.9 million system logic cells, the VU19P supports up to 1.5 Tbps of memory writes and 4.5 Tbps transceiver speeds with 80 different 28 Gbps transceivers.

The circuit also features lidless packaging for better cooling.

RELATED: Intel catches AI bug at Hot Chips Conference with Nervana chip