Crosspoint Solutions introduces high performance 8.4K FPGA.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 24, 1995--Crosspoint Solutions, Inc. took the wraps off its new 8.4K Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) product today when it announced the second member of its CP20K product family.

The new device, designated the CP20840, contains 8,425 available gates, and offers a 30% speed improvement over other programmable logic devices of a similar density. A CP20840 programmed in a typical application would utilize between 5,000 and 6,000 gates (60 to 80% utilization), and operate at 30 to 50 MHz system speeds.

According to Michael Levis, Crosspoint Solutions's Co-founder and Director of Marketing, this high-speed, high-density FPGA "provides a true user-programmable `gate array gates' solution for system designers on the high end of the density and time-to-market equation. Engineers can implement designs in silicon quickly, and using the ASIC EDA tools they already have, get a very high performance device which can be seamlessly migrated to mask programmed gate arrays (MPGAs) if high volume is required later. It really is," Levis continued, "a round peg in a round hole that avoids the remapping problems inherent in other FPGA and PLD architectures that are available today."

In addition to the silicon itself, Crosspoint Solutions also announced a new release of its design tools for placement and routing, and new libraries supporting the CP20K product family. the tools operate on popular workstations offered by Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

Levis continued, "since the architecture is gate array like, designers can utilize nearly all of the popular front-end tools offered by EDA vendors such as Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and Viewlogic. The product's gate-level architectural granularity is also ideally suited for the use of hardware description language (HDL) synthesis design methodology."

The CP20840 FPGA uses a channeled gate array architecture compatible with industry standard mask programmable gate arrays, and is manufactured in a 0.8-micron process using two layer metalization. The I/O buffers have CMOS, TTL, Schmidt trigger and pull-up inputs, and provide 4 mA, 8 mA, 3-state, open-drain, open-source and slew-controlled outputs.

Crosspoint Solutions President and CEO Robert N. Blair said he expected that "the CP20840 would find applications in a broad range of market sectors worldwide, including computer systems, telecommunications and industrial controls. As engineers now have a wide-spread understanding and acceptance of `ASIC methodology' for integrated circuit design, the appeal of a true user-programmable gate array that has a compatible architecture to factory mask programmable gate arrays is directly applicable for both prototyping and for medium volume production runs," he said.

The CP20840 is offered in a ceramic pin grid array and a plastic quad flat pack. U.S. list pricing in 100-up quantities is $467 each for the 299-pin CPGA, and $373 each for the 208-pin PQFP. Samples are available now in the CPGA package, with production quantities available in July 1995. Production quantities of PQFP-packaged CP20840s will be available late in the third quarter, 1995.

Crosspoint Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1989 to develop and market the first Gate Array that is fully user-programmable. The company's FPGAs have compatible architecture, and use the same industry standard EDA (design) tools and libraries as the leading ASIC vendors. Crosspoint Solutions is headquartered at 5000 Old Ironsides Drive, Santa Clara, California 95054. -0-

Note to Editors: The Crosspoint Solution logotype is a registered trademark belonging to Crosspoint Solutions, Inc.

CONTACT: Crosspoint Solutions, Inc.

Michael Levis, 408/988-1584 ext. 203

or

Alfaro Company

Kim Alfaro, 415/563-4769