Yet another new idea for FPGAs: relays?

A relatively unnoticed paper at February's International Symposium on FPGAs described what may be the most radical technology of them all: FPGAs using electromechanical relays. The paper presented work by professors and students at the Stanford University departments of electrical engineering and computer science and researchers at Altera Corp. It describes a conventional FPGA fabric in which MEMS (microelectromechanical-system) relays replace the SRAM cells and MOSFET pass gates that control the interconnect routing. The relays would be fabricated in an encapsulated layer between metal 3 and metal 4, according to Stanford professor Subhasish Mitra, so they would neither take up silicon real estate nor interfere with the critical routing on the first two metal layers.

Beside saving space, the MEMS relays have other potentially useful characteristics. By playing with the design, size, and materials, you can change the voltages necessary to open and close the relay, the speed of the relay, and its on-resistance.

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Stanford University