Xilinx Korea (Branch Manager An Hung-sik) May 31, 2012 – Xilinx announced the availability of the Virtex®-7 H580T FPGA, the industry's first 3D heterogeneous programmable solution. The Virtex-7 HT device integrates up to 16 28 Gbps transceivers and 72 13.1 Gbps transceivers into a single chip solution using Xilinx's Stacked Silicon Interconnect (SSI) technology to deliver industry-leading bandwidth, enabling Nx100G and 400G linecard applications and functionality.

The Virtex-7 HT device, combined with Xilinx's industry-leading 100G gearbox, Ethernet MAC, OTN and Interlaken IP, provides customers with the necessary system integration to address space, power and cost challenges accompanying migration to CFP2 optical modules.

Through SSI technology, Xilinx not only realizes high-capacity devices built on TSMC's 28nm high-performance/low-power process, but can also provide an unprecedented number of transceivers for exceptional system performance. Competitors' monolithic FPGAs contain only 4 28Gbps transceivers. In contrast, Xilinx's heterogeneous implementation characteristics of the Virtex-7 HT device allow independent technology selection for the core FPGA and 28 Gbps transceiver die respectively. This avoided the burden of using high-leakage transistors that waste system power and provide no benefit to computational operations.

By mounting 28 Gbps transceivers on silicon separated from the core FPGA fabric, noise is exceptionally suppressed, enabling superior signal integrity and system margin. Additionally, this improves design productivity and enables faster time-to-market for products.

Chris Bergey, Vice President of Marketing at Luxtera Inc., a leader in silicon photonics, stated "I was impressed by the low transmission jitter technology of 28 Gbps transceivers realized by the Virtex-7 H580T device, and when combined with Luxtera's 4x28 Gbps single-chip silicon photonic transceiver, functional links can be brought up quickly." He further commented "Through this product, networking system manufacturers can easily overcome challenges they face in realizing increasingly broader bandwidth, as Xilinx has set a groundbreaking technological milestone in the industry."

Efficiently upgrading networks to manage exponentially increasing data usage is critical to telecommunications businesses. These upgrades demand improved power and port integration of optical modules while reducing cost per bit. The Virtex-7 HT device is driving migration to CFP2 and future CFP4 optical modules, enabling unprecedented integrated functionality for telecommunications equipment suppliers designing Nx100G and 400G line cards.

Mark Gustlin, Systems Designer for Wired Communications at Xilinx, stated "The Virtex-7 H580T device with 8 28 Gbps transceivers and vast logic capacity is the only FPGA capable of integrating additional line card functionality, allowing designers to implement dual 100G OTN transponders on a single chip." He added "Competitors' ASSP-based solutions comprise 5 devices, are unavailable for over a year, consume at least 40% additional power, yet cost over 50% more."

The Virtex-7 HT with 28 Gbps transceivers can support up to 4 IEEE 100GE gearboxes as a single device integrating advanced debug functionality, OTN, MAC or Interlaken IP within the same FPGA, eliminating the need for separate gearbox and ASSP devices. The upcoming Virtex-7 H870T device also supports 400GE and can accommodate future 400GE modules requiring 16x25 Gbps interfaces. As a result, overall power and BOM costs are reduced while providing more flexible solutions amid evolving protocols.

Xilinx's latest 28 Gbps technology video demonstrates that the Virtex-7 H580T device can deliver the eye and jitter characteristics required to achieve the performance necessary for interfacing with CFP2 optical modules. Further details including new whitepapers and videos are available on Xilinx's 28 Gbps serial transceiver technology page.

Availability
Initial Virtex-7 H580T FPGA production units are currently being supplied to key customers with development support tools available in the recently announced Vivado Design Suite. For detailed information regarding Virtex-7 H580T device usage and future pricing and availability, please contact your local Xilinx distributor.