SiliconBlue Technologies first new FPGA company to ship in production volume in 20 Years

SANTA CLARA, USA: SiliconBlue Technologies, a leader in ultra-low power, single-chip, SRAM FPGAs, today announced that it has shipped production-volume quantities of its iCE65 mobileFPGA devices to more than 10 customers.

This makes SiliconBlue Technologies the first new programmable logic solutions company in over 20 years to achieve this milestone. The achievement comes as the market for highly-integrated, extremely-low power mobile applications such as feature phones, eBook readers, MIDs (mobile internet devices), and DSCs (digital still cameras) has begun explosive growth.

“As we move through the design-in process with customers, it’s apparent that our mobileFPGA devices are providing the right solution at the right time,” said Kapil Shankar, CEO of SiliconBlue. “Much as the growth of traditional FPGAs was driven by the telecom boom of the 1990’s, the growth of mobileFPGA devices is being driven by the rate of innovation in today’s exploding mobile consumer market.”

The rapid adoption of SiliconBlue’s mobileFPGA family is based on its unmatched ability to meet consumers demand for converging functions on portable battery-operated devices.

It is often difficult for hardware designers of products like feature phones and eBooks to meet this demand because of the constrained space, power and cost requirements they face. In addition, the various semiconductor products that they use are not necessarily designed to work together.

By offering high capacity, low power, small packages, and ASIC-like prices, the iCE65 mobileFPGA family delivers the time-to-market benefit of programmable logic solutions to a new and emerging market. They are enabling the creation of seamless new solutions.

Built on TSMC’s standard 65nm low-power CMOS process, SiliconBlue’s iCE65 devices are single-chip, reconfigurable, SRAM-based devices that incorporate the company’s proprietary NVCM (Non-Volatile Configuration Memory) technology. NVCM eliminates the need for an external flash PROM, making them a true ASIC alternative.

Devices are available in the most advanced small-form-factor packaging, including the industry’s first and only Wafer Level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP). SiliconBlue’s complete design environment includes the iCEcube VHDL and Verilog-based development software, and the iCEman evaluation kit.

In addition, the company works closely with its supply partners to meet the highest levels of product quality and production readiness.