Out in Front: July 18, 1996

Chip Express has raised the gate-array-density bar with the CX2000 family. The four members in the laser-programmable gate-array (LPGA) series offer 30,000 to 200,000 usable gates on a chip. All but the smallest member, the CX2030, provides embedded memory in two predefined regions on the chip, which you can use as RAM, FIFO, or ROM devices. The 200,000-gate device provides as much as 128 kbits of single-port RAM, which is word-width-programmable from 2 words to 128 bits and word-depth-programmable from 2 to 16k words. You can also implement dual-port RAM but with a 50% reduction in the maximum number of obtainable embedded RAM bits.

The largest device, the CX2200, offers as many as 552 pads. You can individually program each pad as V_SS, V_DD, or I/O, and you can use each I/O pad at either 3.3 or 5V. Available library cells include simple and complex gates, flip-flops, latches, multiplexers, decoders, three-state drive cells, and a variety of common I/O buffers, thus far excluding Gunning-transceiver-logic I/O cells, however. Power dissipation is 3 µW/MHz/gate at 5V and 1 µW/MHz/gate at 3.3V. At 5V, maximum flip-flop toggle rate is 800 MHz. Worst-case memory-cycle times are 200 MHz at 5V and 150 MHz at 3.3V. Chip Express has also started its "Open Core" program, which lets core suppliers verify their cores on Chip Express' products and make those cores available to designers. Two early partners are Virtual Chips (San Jose, CA) with PCI cores and Sierra Research and Technology (Westlake Village, CA) with ATM Ethernet controller and RISC cores.

CX2000 devices come in several packages, including PQFPs with as many as 304 pins, pin-grid arrays with as many as 391 pins, and ball-grid arrays with as many as 352 pins. Chip Express delivers CX2000 devices as LPGA prototypes in as little as one working day, as low-volume gate arrays in one to three weeks, and in volume production with leadtimes starting at one month. In high-volume production, a typical 80,000-usable-gate device costs around $20.

—by Jim Lipman

Chip Express, Santa Clara, CA. (408) 988-2445, fax (408) 988-2449, http://www.chipexpress.com.