Xilinx joins hands with TSMC to steadily develop process technology

Xilinx's revenue performance continues to rise. Xilinx will work with TSMC to maximize the benefits of new products with 28 nanometer (nm) process, and then continue to increase the proportion of 20 nanometer and 16 nanometer FinFET processes, while creating more than 5 years of continuous profit performance with the three major product lines of field programmable gate array (FPGA), system-on-chip (SoC) and three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC).

　　Steve Glaser, senior vice president of corporate strategy and marketing at Xilinx, believes that Xilinx will be able to leverage its good partnership with TSMC to gain steady progress in the advanced process race and win customer favor.

　　Steve Glaser, senior vice president of corporate strategy and marketing at Xilinx, said that in the wave of intelligence, FPGA can provide manufacturers with the advantage of creating product differentiation in the shortest time, thus becoming an important component driving the intelligence of systems such as networks, data centers, automobiles, industry, and energy. Xilinx is continuously advancing product process nodes, among which 28-nanometer process products have performed the best. It is estimated that the company's 28-nanometer FPGA market share will reach 61% this year and will exceed 70% in the first quarter of next year, and will bring the company more than $100 million in revenue. In 2014, the 28-nanometer FPGA will move towards the revenue target of $250 million.

　　Glaser further pointed out that after the 28nm process became an important node for the company's profitability, Xilinx also put into production 20nm process FPGA in July this year. It will use the UltraScale programmable architecture to bring customers product performance that is 1.5 to 2 times higher than that of its competitors, and continue to contribute to revenue in the next few years.

　　Glaser emphasized that TSMC is undoubtedly the best partner for Xilinx in the advanced process competition. According to Xilinx's internal analysis data, TSMC has a higher transistor density advantage in the 20nm process with double patterning technology, and has the expertise and design resources to manufacture Xilinx 3D ICs and ARM system-on-chips, including UltraScale architecture, Vivado software and silicon intellectual property (IP), so it is a long-term foundry partner for Xilinx.

　　In fact, Xilinx and TSMC have jointly announced the mass production of the industry's first heterogeneous 3D ICs, the Virtex-7 HT series, on the 21st. Xilinx uses TSMC's CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate) technology to develop 28nm 3D IC products, integrating multiple chips on a single system, which can significantly reduce chip size while improving power consumption and performance.

　　Glaser analyzed that although competitor Altera has chosen Intel as its foundry partner, in the FPGA advanced process competition, in addition to the foundry's process technology, FPGA manufacturers must also update product architecture and design tools.

　　Glaser pointed out that in the future, Xilinx will use the advantages brought by the three major processes (28/20/16nm) and the three major product lines - FPGA, SoC and 3D IC to extend its product tentacles, and launch a series of solutions targeting the needs of low-price, high-performance and high-end processors combined with 20nm process memory.

　　According to Xilinx's latest second quarter financial report for fiscal year 2014, the company's new product series such as Virtex-7/Kintex-7/Artix-7/Zynq-7000 have achieved good sales. Among them, the Zynq-7000 system-on-chip series not only continues to gain ground in the automotive and industrial markets, but also has won the favor of more than 40% of wireless solution manufacturers and will be used in data centers in the future. Therefore, the new product series accounted for 36% of the products sold in the second quarter, the highest proportion of all products, and increased by 22% from the first quarter, which is an important driving force for Xilinx's 3% revenue growth.