Industry's Largest 0.13-micron FPGA Now Production Qualified

Altera's Stratix EP1S80 Device Transitions to Production Status

San Jose, Calif., January 21, 2003-Altera Corporation today announced its largest available Stratix device family member, the EP1S80, has transitioned to full production status in less than three months from initial shipments as engineering samples. The EP1S80 device is the largest 0.13-micron FPGA available on the market today. With 79,040 logic elements (LEs), 7.2 Mbits of embedded RAM, and 1,238 user I/Os, the EP1S80 device offers more memory, I/O pins, and digital signal processing capability than any competing device.

"The rapid rollout of Stratix 1S80 devices means that we can speed the development of our next-generation plasma display panel TV," said Bon-Cheol Koo, senior research engineer at LG Electronics Inc. "We have found the high memory density of Stratix devices to be very useful in our products."

Altera's Stratix EP1S80 device is built on TSMC's state-of-the-art 0.13-micron, all-layer copper process technology, providing customers with both increased core performance and excellent availability. In addition, Altera's patented redundancy technology allows this large device to be manufactured in a predictable and cost-effective manner. "The excellent yield improvements on TSMC's 0.13-micron process, combined with Altera's unique redundancy technology, are helping us meet the strong customer demand for the EP1S80 device," said Tim Colleran, vice president of product marketing at Altera.

The flawless rollout of the Stratix EP1S80, currently in the hands of several dozen customers, is attributed to the modular architecture of Stratix FPGAs combined with extensive functional verification of the devices before tape-out. Customers now have immediate access to volume production EP1S80 devices through their local Altera distributor.

Altera is justifiably proud of its performance with all copper FPGAs at 0.13 microns. The company is now shipping devices from three different families that are being produced on TSMC's 0.13-micron copper process. Altera has moved the Stratix EP1S80 to production and has begun sampling devices from its Stratix GX and low-cost Cyclone families. The company claims that it is currently shipping 20 products manufactured using TSMC's all-copper process.

The first two Stratix GX devices being shipped are the EP1SGX25F and EP1SGX25F. The EP1SGX25F contains about 25K logic elements and has 16 3.125 Gbps full-duplex transceivers, which, according to the company, is more than any other FPGA currently in customer's hands.

Engineering samples of the Cyclone EP1C6 and EP1C20 are now available and production devices are scheduled for late March. Altera plans to ship some 25,000 Cyclone devices to distributors before the end of the 1Q03. The company claims to be working on more than 500 Cyclone design engagements among the accounts being tracked, and many more among its broad base of customers.

Altera and Xilinx took two very different approaches for their all-copper 0.13-micron devices. Actually the approaches taken were really controlled by the fab each selected. Altera stayed with TSMC, its long-term partner, while Xilinx opted to work with IBM for the Virtex-II Pro series of parts.

TSMC adopted the more conservative approach of using FSG for the insulating layer in the copper process. While FSG has about a 10% lower dielectric constant that the insulator previously used, it does not qualify as a low-K dielectric since its dielectric constant is not less that 3.0. IBM choose Dow Corning's Silk insulator as its low-K dielectric for 0.13 microns. As a result, Xilinx was able to claim higher operating speeds for its Virtex-II Pro parts than Altera could claims for Stratix.

According to Altera, IBM has not been able to qualify its Silk-based 0.13 micron process for production and is likely to give up on the material. UMC, Xilinx's other source for Virtex-II Pro, is also trying to use the Silk dielectric. The Silk insulator material is soft and porous, making it very hard to use in complex ICs.

Altera claims that UMC is now trying to qualify Novellus' K-Film as a low-K dielectric for its all copper 0.13-micron process. K-Film is like Applied Material's Black Diamond low-K insulator, which is the material TSMC and Altera plan to use at 90 nm. Black Diamond has a dielectric constant of 2.9.

Altera is being very cautious about a move to the 90 nm node. It has been running evaluation parts using TSMC's Cyber Shuttle program with the Black Diamond insulator at 90 nm. Altera expects to tape out a 90 nm device late in 2003 and to be in production by mid-2004 with a mature process.

The company is designing a new family of 1.2V FPGAs for the 90 nm node. It is working to design around leakage current problems, which could be five times worse at 90 nm that they are at 0.13 microns.

Altera and Xilinx will continue their battle for the leadership position in FPGAs for the foreseeable future. Xilinx won that role several years ago when Altera stumbled with its Quartus design tools. Altera has since been in a recovery position. It has, however, definitively moved ahead of Xilinx in terms of delivering devices at 0.13 micron. Xilinx still has a very strong position as a result of the large number of design wins for its Virtex-II devices. In addition, a large number of designers switched to its parts when Altera could not deliver workable design tools.