News and New Products

Xilinx goes nonvolatile with Spartan-3AN FPGA

By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- EDN, 3/1/2007

Xilinx Inc, the 800-lbs gorilla of the FPGA business, is flexing its muscles and trying to claim rival territory, as the company jumps into the nonvolatile FPGA market whith the Spartan-3AN device, which it introduced this week the Spartan-3AN device. The SIP (system-in-package) device incorporates a 90 nm, SRAM-based XilSpartan-3A FPGA die from Xilinx atop a NOR-flash die from an undisclosed memory vendor. The Spartan-3A communicates with the NOR through four pins that Xilinx planted in the middle of the Spartan-3A when the company released it a couple of months ago.

SRAM-based FPGAs typically boast better performance and greater capacity than their nonvolatile counterparts, but SRAM-based FPGAs lag behind nonvolatile FPGAs in stability and security. Nonvolatile devices retain their data and programming when users turn off the power to the devices. SRAM devices, on the other hand, lose their data when the power is off and, when on, must access an outside memory to configure the FPGA. During this configuration step, clever thieves could conceivably tap into the memory to FPGA interconnect and steal the design. Also, nonvolatile FPGAs also seem a more secure choice as FPGA vendors and their customers move into areas lacking well-established IP (intellectual-property) laws or to applications placing a high priority on data retention.

That security has been the marketing cry and indeed the selling point for Actel, which has for several years offered nonvolatile FPGAs. With the release of Spartan-3AN, Xilinx seems to concur with that message and will try to flex its muscles in the high-volume, reasonably low-priced-nonvolatile-FPGA market.

Xilinx Chief Executive Officer Wim Rholandts told reporters attending the GlobalPress 2007 Summit that the new Spartan-3AN, like the Spartan-3A, will go after the triple-play market of voice, video, and data.

The 3AN includes the features of 3A, such as two low-power hibernate modes and what Xilinx calls Device DNA to further protect the device from cloning and overbuilding. But the additional NOR flash boosts the embedded memory to 16 Mbytes, which allows the device to hold two SRAM configurations. The two-die configuration boasts 100,000 write/erase cycles, write and erase protection, and advanced memory partitioning.

Xilinx will offer five versions of the Spartan-3AN, ranging from 50,000 to 1.4 million system gates with as much as 576 kbytes of block RAM, 16 Mbytes of embedded flash, and as many as 502 I/Os supporting 26 I/O-protocol standards. The company is shipping the XC3S200AN, XC3S700AN and XC3S1400AN devices, and all five devices will be in production by the third quarter of this year. Xilinx’s ISE 9.1i design-tool suite and Spartan-3 Generation library of application-specific IP supports the product.