Xcell journal
PUBLISHER Mike Santarini
mike.santarini@xilinx.com
408-626-5981
EDITOR Jacqueline Damian
ART DIRECTOR Scott Blair
DESIGN/PRODUCTION Teie, Gelwicks & Associates
1-800-493-5551
ADVERTISING SALES Dan Teie
1-800-493-5551
xcelladsales@aol.com
INTERNATIONAL Melissa Zhang, Asia Pacific
melissa.zhang@xilinx.com
Xilinx, Inc.
2100 Logic Drive
San Jose, CA 95124-3400
Phone: 408-559-7778
FAX: 408-879-4780
www.xilinx.com/xcell/
Christelle Moraga, Europe/
Middle East/Africa
christelle.moraga@xilinx.com
Yumi Homura, Japan
yumi.homura@xilinx.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS All Inquiries
www.xcellpublications.com
REPRINT ORDERS 1-800-493-5551
www.xilinx.com/xcell/
© 2009 Xilinx, Inc. All rights reserved. XILINX,
the Xilinx Logo, and other designated brands included
herein are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. All other trademarks
are the property of their respective owners.
The articles, information, and other materials included
in this issue are provided solely for the convenience of
our readers. Xilinx makes no warranties, express,
implied, statutory, or otherwise, and accepts no liability
with respect to any such articles, information, or other
materials or their use, and any use thereof is solely at
the risk of the user. Any person or entity using such
information in any way releases and waives any claim it
might have against Xilinx for any loss, damage, or
expense caused thereby.
L E T T E R F R O M T H E P U B L I S H E R
Golden Age of Semiconductors
Points to Platinum Era Ahead
‘Only the beginning’ of a great new wave of invention built on the IC.
Many years ago, one of my former colleagues over at EDN magazine mailed me a copy
of Gordon Moore’s landmark article “Cramming More Components onto Integrated
Circuits.” It was a reprint of a piece that first appeared in the now-defunct magazine
Electronics on April 19, 1965, and I’ve kept it at my desk ever since. If you’ve never
read the article, do so. Moore opens with the sentence, “The future of integrated electronics is
the future of electronics itself,” and then goes on to make a slew of brilliant predictions, foreseeing
the inventions of the personal computer, the Internet and the handheld market—fruits of
the ever-progressing IC.
Of course, the article is considered a landmark chiefly because Moore goes on to write that the
number of transistors on an IC will double roughly every year (later amended to every two years),
a formulation that Cal Tech professor Carver Mead famously dubbed “Moore’s Law.” The semiconductor
and, in turn, electronics industries have soared for the last 44 years paced indisputably
by Moore’s Law.
Back in 2005, I had the pleasure of covering a Computer History Museum event for EDN
where Carver Mead actually interviewed Moore about his law. (You can view the video
of their chat at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6jUSjpr-Q&feature=PlayList&p=
6B12A0FACFA35D1F&index=7.) More recently, I witnessed another event of historic importance
for the industry: the induction ceremony of 15 semiconductor giants into the National Inventors
Hall of Fame (read my pldesignline.com blog coverage at http://www.dspdesignline.com/
news/217400639).
Moore and Mead were among the 15 inductees, but I was really there to honor Xilinx co-founder
Ross Freeman, who was also inducted (posthumously) into the Hall of Fame, and to learn more
about him from his colleagues and family. For those of you who may not
be familiar with the name, Freeman invented the FPGA in 1984 (Patent
No. 4,870,302), only five years before he died prematurely at the age of
45. At this fascinating event, I learned that the FPGA probably would not
have been commercialized or grown as successful as it has had Freeman,
his co-founders and, ultimately, Xilinx’s early investors not wholeheartedly
embraced Moore’s Law.
Essentially, Freeman’s early FPGA circuit wasn’t considered the most
efficient use of transistors, but it was inventive and unique. In those
days, transistors were very expensive to produce. Freeman’s invention
Xilinx co-founder
Ross Freeman
traded off transistor minimization and utilization for flexibility, fast
turnaround and the convenience of outsourced manufacturing. Back in
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.