Xilinx has announced the first shipments of its Virtex-7 2000T FPGA, the first product using 2.5D IC stacked packaging technology. The chip is built on TSMC's 28nm HPL (low power with HKMG) process, said Vincent Tong, company senior VP of worldwide quality and new product introduction, during a recent press event in Taipei.

The new Xilinx FPGA is built using 6.8 billion transistors to give customers access to two million logic cells, equivalent to 20 million ASIC gates, for system integration, ASIC replacement, and ASIC prototyping and emulation. This capacity is made possible by Xilinx's stacked silicon interconnect technology, the first application of 2.5D IC stacking that gives customers twice the capacity of competing devices and leaping ahead of what Moore's Law could otherwise offer in a monolithic 28nm FPGA, the company said.

Customers are using the Virtex-7 2000T FPGA to replace large capacity ASICs to achieve overall comparable total costs in a third of the time, creating integrated systems that increase system bandwidth and reduce power by eliminating I/O interconnect, and accelerating the prototyping and emulation of advanced ASIC systems,according to the company.

Xilinx has secured orders for the new FPGA from Japan-based TV vendors and wireless equipment manufacturers, Tong revealed. The chip has also cut into the supply chain for Japan-made 3D TVs, Tong added.

In addition, Tong indicated that Xilinx will be working only with TSMC to develop 28nm solutions through the end of 2012. But Tong stressed United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) remains Xilinx' major foundry partner.

All Xilinx 28nm devices, which include the Artix-7, Kintex-7 and Virtex-7 series FPGAs, share a unified architecture that supports design and IP reuse within and across families, according to the company. They are all built on TSMC's 28nm HPL process to deliver FPGAs that consume 50% less static power than competing devices.