Altera gets 14nm FPGA test chips back from Intel
1 min read
Altera ruffled some industry feathers in February 2013 when it announced that it would be manufacturing devices at the 14nm node using Intel as a foundry, rather than its traditional supplier TSMC. A year later, Altera has received the first test chips of FPGAs made on Intel's Tri-Gate process.
"The news marks a significant milestone for Altera and for our customers," said Brad Howe, senior vice president of research and development. "Testing vital elements of our FPGAs in 14 nm Tri-Gate silicon allows us to validate device performance early in the design process and accelerate the availability of our 14 nm based products significantly."
The 14 nm FPGA test chips incorporate some of the key IP components in Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs, which Altera says will be the highest density monolithic devices, with more than 4million logic elements (LEs), along with a quad core 64bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor system.
Sunit Rikhi, general manager of Intel Custom Foundry, added: "Successfully demonstrating the functionality of Altera's FPGA technology using our 14 nm Tri-Gate process is a testament to the outstanding work Altera's team has done with our foundry team."
* In March, Intel published test results for a 14nm serdes device capable of handling 32Gbit/s. "The first pass success of 14nm SerDes development demonstrates the readiness of Intel Custom Foundry's 14nm design platform," said Mark Bohr, a senior fellow in Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group. "It clearly presents evidence that power, performance and area can be simultaneously improved, even for complex analogue circuits, on Intel's 14nm technologies."
