Achronix Announces Available Now for Its Industry's Highest-Performance Speedster7t FPGA Devices

Achronix Announces Available Now for Its Industry's Highest-Performance Speedster7t FPGA Devices

Designed to handle high-bandwidth workloads in applications such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), 5G infrastructure, network processing, computational storage, test and measurement

Shenzhen, China, April 2021 – Achronix Semiconductor, a leader in high-performance field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and embedded FPGAs (eFPGA) semiconductor intellectual property (IP), announced today that it has begun shipping its Speedster®7tAC7t1500 FPGA chips using 7nm process technology to customers ahead of schedule. The Speedster7t series is designed to handle high-bandwidth workloads in a wide range of applications such as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), 5G infrastructure, network processing, computing storage, test and measurement; in these applications, Speedster7t FPGAs eliminate key performance bottlenecks that traditional FPGAs have.

The Speedster7t FPGA family uses TSMC's 7nm process technology to provide the industry's highest performance for applications such as network processing, storage, and computational acceleration. Robert Blake, CEO of Achronix, said:

“Achronix’s Speedster7t FPGAs offer customers the highest bandwidth available in FPGAs today and include innovative architectural features that make them ideal for data acceleration applications.”

“I am very proud of what the Achronix team has accomplished. The device is performing as expected and hardware validation of the first silicon is completed ahead of schedule, allowing us to reduce our time to market from months to weeks thanks to the leading process technology and manufacturing expertise of our foundry partner, TSMC.”

The AC7t1500 FPGA chip is optimized for high-bandwidth applications. It includes the industry's first two-dimensional network-on-chip (2D NoC) with a bidirectional bandwidth capacity of more than 20 Tbps, as well as 112 Gbps SerDes, PCIe Gen5, 400G Ethernet and GDDR6 interfaces with external memory bandwidth of 4 Tbps; it also includes a new, innovative machine learning processor (MLP) module array that is ideal for a variety of high-performance workloads required in AI/ML applications.

Speedster7t FPGAs are supported by Achronix's tool suite, which includes the Synplify Pro synthesis tool and the ACE place-route and timing tool. These industry-proven design tools are now available to customers to evaluate and design with Speedster7t FPGA devices.

One of the main architectural innovations of the Speedster7t FPGA is the industry's first 2D NoC on-chip network. The 2D NoC covers the entire FPGA logic array and provides dedicated high-bandwidth paths, allowing all functional unit modules and peripheral I/Os to be interconnected and between them and the FPGA logic array. The 2D NoC eliminates the complex routing bottlenecks found in traditional FPGAs and can send or receive 512Gbps of bandwidth at each of the 80 nodes throughout the FPGA, resulting in a total bidirectional bandwidth of more than 20Tbps. This structure simplifies placement and routing and accelerates timing closure, allowing designers to use all available logic processing and memory resources to achieve differentiation in their designs.

Supply plan

Engineering samples of the AC7t1500 FPGA are currently being provided to customers. Achronix expects to complete full device verification of the FPGA logic array, hard IP, and external interfaces in the second half of 2021 and will begin shipping production devices before the end of 2021.

In January 2021, Achronix entered into a definitive merger agreement with ACE Convergence Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: ACEV), allowing Achronix to be listed on the Nasdaq. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2021.