Achronix to Deploy Intel 22nm Process Technology

Achronix Semiconductor Corp., a fabless provider of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) announced that it has acquired strategic access to Intel (News - Alert) Corporation’s 22 nanometer process technology, on the basis of which it will be able to develop advanced FPGAs.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company builds fast FPGAs that are capable of up to 1.5 GHz peak performance, and has its sales offices and representatives in the United States, Europe, China, Japan, and Korea.

The new Achronix Speedster22i FPGA family will be much ahead of the currently available FPGAs, and will enable the enterprises to achieve cost effective production of high performance devices over 2.5M LUTs in size, equivalent to an ASIC of over 20 million gates.

Intel’s 22nm process technology will offer enhanced performance and power savings to enable the Speedster22i in achieving enhanced FPGA speed and power efficiency, providing a maximum of 300 percent higher performance, 50 percent lower power, and 40 percent lower cost than other FPGA deployed in different process technologies.

Helpful in a number of applications in the telecommunication, networking, industrial and consumer markets, Achronix Speedster22i will allow enterprises to deploy advanced applications such as 100G, 400G Ethernet networking and LTE (News - Alert) mobile communications. It will be the first commercial FPGA family that can be manufactured in the United States of America, so that the military and aerospace applications requiring ‘on shore’ silicon will also be able to benefit from the platform.

In the words of Sunit Rikhi, vice president, Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel, company’s manufacturing strengths and lead in process technology offers leadership cost, performance and power efficiency benefits, giving its manufacturing customers such as Achronix an opportunity to design products with superior capabilities.

According to John Lofton Holt, chief executive officer at Achronix, Intel has the best process technology in the world and Achronix is privileged to have formed this strategic relationship, which enables simultaneous improvements in speed, power, density and cost. Holt noted that the combination of the advanced 22nm process from Intel and the advanced FPGA technology from Achronix enables Speedster22i to eclipse other FPGA solutions expected to hit the market in the next few years.

In August 2010, Achronix Semiconductor and Opticomp, a high throughput optical module provider jointly readied a reprogrammable development platform for developing, characterizing and demonstrating state-of-the-art optical data communications. The new development system leveraged Achronix’s Bridge100 FPGA board and Opticomp’s 120-Gbps multi-port system that is expandable to 160-Gbps and can be used with individual optical modules.