Move to DEFCON 1! Stand down…false alarm: QuickLogic is not canning its PolarPro line

The folks at QuickLogic and several of their customers (some of whom are in military application or are the military) had a bit of a scare yesterday afternoon and this morning when a competing publication posted a write up of yesterday’s QuickLogic press conference in which the company announced it is changing from an FPGA vendor to a vendor of CSSPs “Customer Specific Standards Products.:

A competitor to EDN, errantly reported in its initial report on the press conference that QuickLogic was essentially going to shelve its fairly new PolarPro low power device. I was there and it isn’t but after reading the competing pub’s account, I had to call QuickLogic to make sure I was at the same press conference.

What I heard at the press conference was QuickLogic is betting its future on PolarPro and a derivative of PolarPro called ArcticLink. At the press conference, the company’s president and CEO Tom Hart said in becoming a CSSP vendor, the company is playing to its strengths and is focusing on the mobile handset market where its one time programmable ViaLink fabric based devices have gained great momentum due their inherent low power consumption. But the announcement was also a concession that Quicklogic couldn’t compete against the likes of Xilinx and Altera in the high end or for that matter medium-end FPGA space, which Hart said is increasingly becoming a “Coke and Pepsi” market.

Not wanting to be a Schweppes, Hart said QuickLogic is going to cease further development of its QuickMIPS FPGA—it will continue to produce it and support current customers but will not develop further versions of the QuickMIPS product line. The company will instead focus on tailoring its ViaLink based devices, PolarPro and ArcticLink, to customers in the seemingly ever growing mobile hand set market.

The competing pub/website has since fixed the article but Quicklogic said the company had received panicked calls from PolarPro customers and its partners inquiring about the errant report. I’ve certainly had my bad days as a reporter so I sympathize.

You can read my account  “Quicklogic wants to be known as "CSSP" instead of "FPGA" vendor” for further details of the QuickLogic announcement.