On January 20, 2010, UMC and Xilinx announced they have fully qualified the Virtex-6 FPGA family on the foundry's high-performance 40nm logic process. The qualification is the result of the close work between engineering teams from both companies to further enhance yield, reliability and cycle time. The full qualification of the Virtex-6 family signifies the transition to 40nm volume production following UMC's first shipments of the devices in March 2009. Built using third-generation Xilinx ASMBL architecture, the Virtex-6 FPGA family delivers 15% higher performance and 15% lower power consumption compared to competitive 40nm FPGA offerings. The devices operate on a 1.0v core voltage with an available 0.9v low-power option and are supported by a new generation of development tools delivered by ISE Design Suite 11 and a vast library of IP already available for the market leading 65-nm Virtex-5 FPGA family to ensure productive development and design migration. Early engagement, design for manufacturing and an effective test vehicle process are also contributing to the successful roll-out of the Virtex-6 family.
By building on what they learned from working together closely on previous generations, the Xilinx and UMC engineering teams were able to beat the tape-out to production duration of the Virtex-5 family by a quarter. UMC's independently developed 45/40nm logic process utilizes sophisticated immersion lithography for its 12 critical layers and incorporates the latest technology advancements such as ultra-shallow junction, embedded silicon- germanium and mobility enhancement techniques, and ultra low-k dielectrics. Currently, several customers have 45/40nm products being manufactured at UMC, with thousands of wafers having already been shipped. Virtex-6 FPGAs are the programmable silicon foundation for Targeted Design Platforms that deliver integrated software and hardware components to enable designers to focus on innovation as soon as their development cycle begins. The Virtex-6 FPGA family comprises three domain-optimized FPGA platforms that deliver different feature mixes, including DSP slices, memory blocks and serial transceivers supporting up to 11.2Gb/s to best address a variety of customer applications.