NETANYA, Israel — Altera Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) expects to start shipping programmable logic devices made using a 40-nm process this year.
Danny Biran, vice president of product and corporate marketing revealed the plans to EE Times Europe at this week's Global Semiconductor Association conference in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Wim Roelandts, chairman of rival PLD vendor Xilinx Inc., said in a separate interview that Xilinx is also working on 40-nm devices. Roelandts, declined to specify when Xilinx is due to ship these devices, but hinted that it may be later this year.
Neither Biran nor Roelandts would elaborate regarding the specific products to be made on the 40-nm process.
Biran said Altera is working on the 40-nm devices with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. The Taiwanese foundry recently announced it expects to ramp up its 40-nm process this year as a "half node" step toward the 32-nm process node, which is expected next year.
"As with any new technology generation, the 40-nm process will enable higher densities, better memory and logic capabilities; and smaller die size that will lead to cost advantages," said Biran.
Altera's chairman, president and CEO John Daane has said in the past that Altera is not in the race for newer process nodes.
"There is no change in our strategy, but we took advantage of what we had done in previous generations," Biran told EE Times Europe.
"We were very pleased with our 90-nm based architecture. We designed our 65-nm Startix and Cyclone FPGAs, and felt they need a revolutionary solution for power consumption, so we implemented a very innovative architectural concept that lowered the consumption. We saw that this solution works, so we decided to take it to the next generation, and started working on 40-nm test chips with TSMC several years ago."
Brian added Altera is stepping up investments in software, which is becoming more and more important for FPGAs in any technology generation. "FPGAs are not only used in more products, but they are becoming the heart of the system. Development costs become dominant in the race to shorten the time to market, and software is an important enabler for that purpose."
