Xilinx delivers industry's lowest power FPGAS with new Spartan-3L family.

Xilinx has announced immediate availability of the industry's lowest power FPGAs--the Spartan-3L family. The new family provides customers with up to 98% quiescent power reduction, enabling lower cost cooling systems, smaller, less expensive enclosures and higher system reliability. The Spartan-3L family is a key element of the Xilinx Power Initiative, a corporate-wide focus on delivering solutions that address customers' urgent power management requirements.

"Modern applications are increasingly being developed with power management in mind. With the Spartan-3L family, companies will now be able to employ programmable logic in applications where both cost and power consumption are critical factors," said Clay Johnson, vice president of the General Products Division at Xilinx. "Our experience shipping over one million Spartan-3 devices has enabled Xilinx to refine our 90nm manufacturing techniques and yield these new devices from the low power corner of the process."

Combining the proven dynamic power benefits of 90nm technology with the latest quiescent power reductions, Spartan-3L devices have the lowest total power consumption in their class. A new unique Hibernate mode offers two levels of power reduction--a simple stand-by mode allowing up to 68% lower quiescent power, and an active power management mode for up to 98% lower quiescent power (below 6mA for the XC3S1000L and below 8mA for the XC3S1500L) than comparable Spartan-3 devices. The Hibernate mode is compatible with existing Spartan-3 designs and is suitable for use in existing Spartan-3 systems. Spartan-3L devices preserve the low cost advantages and rich feature-set of the 90nm Spartan-3 family, and are pin and feature-compatible.

In related news, the company also announced it has shipped over 100 million Spartan Series devices. Since its introduction in 1998, the Spartan Series has enjoyed unprecedented market demand for deployment in consumer-oriented, cost-sensitive applications. The Spartan-3L family significantly expands the FPGA market to power and heat sensitive products such as consumer appliances and rack-mounted equipment--applications previously served primarily by application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). According to market research, as much as $3 billion of the approximately $20 billion ASIC market could shift to FPGAs with significantly reduced power consumption (iSuppli Corporation).

Extending the scope of the low cost 90nm Spartan-3 family, the XC3S1000L Spartan-3L device with one million system gates is available for under $14.00* and the XC3S1500L with 1.5 million system gates is available for under $22.00*. These devices are available from distributors worldwide or direct from Xilinx. The XC3S4000L device with four million system gates will be available by end of year, 2004. In addition to a reduced power option, the full Spartan-3 product line includes a complete selection of speed-grades, commercial and industrial temperature grades, and a wide variety of packages. Priced at just US$99, the Spartan-3 Starter Kit is immediately available through authorized Xilinx distributors or direct from the Xilinx online store.