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Tooling up for 65nm
Xilinx Updates Software for Virtex-5
Every time FPGAs hit a new process generation, there is a buzz. People want to hear about the underlying architecture, learn how fast the new devices will go, guess at how much logic they'll
hold, speculate on whether we'll need a small nuclear power plant to operate them,
and marvel at marketing's ability to take something already quite impressive and
exaggerate it to the point where we have no idea what it can actually do. We tingle
with excitement. We wait a year until actual devices are available. Then, when the
magic moment comes and we get our much anticipated first look at the parts, they
look like a little square of plastic and metal just like all the parts we've seen
for the past twenty years. The logo is updated, but all the extremely cool stuff is
otherwise completely obscured. This is where FPGAs don't offer the same opportunity
for nerdly worship that, say, drag racers do. With most other technologies, the cool
stuff is right out where you can see it – in all its chrome-plated,
titanium-tinted, carbon-fiber-reinforced glory.
In FPGAs, our first (and often only) opportunity to
get inside and kick the tires of a new FPGA family is when the software is
available. During our use of any FPGA technology, 99% of our interaction with the
product as designers will actually be with the software tools and not with the
devices at all. Those exotic chips will sit there on the lab bench soldered to our
development boards looking basically square and boring.
A few weeks ago, Xilinx announced the world's first
65nm FPGAs – Virtex-5. Instead of having to wait a year to see them, I got to
see one right away. Evidently, Xilinx has had them in select customers' hands for a
few months now, and they actually physically exist. My hands almost trembled as I
held the development board. OK, not really. Still, there it was looking just like
all the other Virtex parts, only with a 5 tattooed on the top (all part of a smart
new logo, of course). Now, however, the software is out and we can all take a
serious (albeit virtual) look at the new line. [more]
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