Intel Applies 22nm Technology in Foundry Deal with FPGA Startup Tabula
Continuing a tradition of programmable logic serving as a driver of foundry technology, Tabula Inc. (Santa Clara) said Tuesday (Feb. 21) that it is working with Intel Custom Foundry to manufacture Tabula’s programmable logic devices on Intel’s 22nm tri-gate process.
Intel last year signed up another FPGA house, Achronix, as a foundry customer. With their need for high-density and fast transistors, FPGA vendors have pushed foundries to the next node for several decades. Intel appears to be taking a similar path, working with innovative programmable logic vendors such as Achronix and Tabula which are eager to cut into the markets held by Altera and Xilinx.
Tabula said the combination of its innovative architecture and Intel’s smaller 22nm transistor process will give it a smaller die size and a technology lead over conventional FPGA vendors.
Tabula claims that it uses “time as the third dimension” to reduce the number of components needed to implement a function. Its “Spacetime” programmable fabric delivers an architecture with “dramatically shorter interconnects than traditional FPGAs and the ability to clock the entire fabric – logic, DSP, memory, and interconnect — at the same frequency.”
Tabula and Intel have been working together for some time prior to the public announcement, including an effort to co-optimize packaging technology. Tabula’s products are aimed at network infrastructure systems requiring high-bandwidth data flows such as switches, routers, packet inspection appliances, and other high-performance systems.
Daniel Gitlin, Tabula’s manufacturing vice president, is expected to discuss his company’s technology further on Wednesday at the Ethernet Technology Summit in San Jose. In a press release, Gitlin said the foundry relationship with Intel “will provide our company with a head start of several years, much as Intel achieved in 2007 by introducing high-k metal-gate (HKMG) transistors at the 45nm node.”
Sunit Rikhi, a vice president at Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, said Intel has worked closely with Tabula throughout the product design cycle to co-optimize Tabula’s 3PLD family with Intel’s 22nm manufacturing process and design kits.
Founded in 2003, Tabula is in volume production with its ABAX family, made on a 40nm process and operating clock speeds of up to 1.6 GHz.
Qualcomm, Micron and GlobalFoundries gained ground in the top 20 rankings in terms of sales in the first quarter of 2012, according to IC Insights. GlobalFoundries replaced Elpida in the top 20 rankings. The foundry vendor also jumped ahead of United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). 
The IC business climate continues to improve in 2012, prompting various firms to raise their respective capital spending forecasts. Total semiconductor capital spending is now projected to hit $56.5 billion in 2012, nearly flat from the previous year and almost $6 billion higher than the January outlook, according to a new forecast from VLSI Research Inc.