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SiliconBlue Pioneers New FPGA Technology for Handheld, Ultra-low Power Applications

2nd June 2008

SiliconBlue

ES Admin

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SiliconBlue has announced a new class of single-chip, ultra low-power FPGA devices, that set a new industry standard for price, power and space along with unprecedented ASIC-like logic capacity for battery-powered, handheld consumer applications. Manufactured on TSMC’s 65nm LP (low-power) standard CMOS process, the new single-chip iCE family of FPGAs incorporate the company’s proprietary NVCM (Non-Volatile Configuration Memory) technology, eliminating external flash PROM costs while making it easy-to-use.

“We are introducing the first new FPGA technology in ten years, allowing us to build from the ground up single-chip, reprogrammable, ultra-low power FPGAs,” said Kapil Shankar, CEO of SiliconBlue. “Our two-process generation lead, gives our customers an unprecedented two to five times price advantage over competing non-volatile PLDs. We have delivered all the capabilities and advantages of wall-plugged consumer FPGAs to battery powered handhelds today.”

According to Semico Research, handheld applications are a rapidly growing market for programmable logic as sales in these applications are forecasted to be over US$650 million by 2010. SiliconBlue’s products are optimized for smart phones, PMPs (portable media players), DSCs (digital still cameras), MIDs (mobile internet devices), PNDs (personal navigation devices), handheld POS (point of sale) systems, medical instruments, Edu-toys and flash camcorders.

Rich Wawrzyniak, Senior Analyst at Semico, said, “Power and cost have been issues from very early on in the programmable logic industry. Despite efforts to improve in these areas, traditional FPGA solutions, for the most part, do not meet handheld requirements for power or cost. SiliconBlue’s technology positions them to deliver an unprecedented combination of power, price and performance to designers who want to use programmable logic but have not because power was too high or performance was too low.”

“SiliconBlue has attracted an incredibly skilled team of PLD experts, who have been instrumental in developing and patenting many of the leading programmable logic technologies. Their experience comes from industry-leaders such as Xilinx, Altera, AMD, LSI Logic, and Intel. This skilled team has enabled SiliconBlue to establish ultra low power technology and process leadership, compared to competing FPGAs trapped on lagging process nodes,” said Rich Sevcik, former Executive Vice President, Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), and current Member of the Board for SiliconBlue.