AT&T Micro introduces latest ORCA FPGA line

Electronic News, June 12, 1995

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J.--AT&T Microelectronics last week unveiled a family of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for the ORCA product line, along with a new release of the AT&T Foundry software which provides place-and-route support for both the ORCA and ATT3000 families of FPGAs. AT&T also said its planned rollout of 0.35-micron FPGAs is on track for the end of this summer (EN, Feb. 27).

The new ORCA 4,000-gate ATT2C04 and 6,000-gate ATT2C06 FPGAs fill in a gap that previously existed in the company's product line between the ATT3000 family and ORCA family products. In addition, the new products complete the lower end of the ORCA product line, which previously included devices ranging from 8,000 to 40,000 gates. The 2C04 offers 3,500 to 4,300 usable gates, 400 registers, and up to 6,400 RAM bits and 160 I/Os in a 10x10 array. The 2C06 features 5,000 to 6,200 usable gates, 576 registers, and up to 9,216 RAM bits and 192 I/Os in a 12x12 array configuration.

"Routing these new devices is done in a fraction of the time that's needed for comparable devices," said Chris De-Monico, FPGA product line director at AT&T Micro. "And we're offering this combination of higher routability and greater ease of use at a fraction of the cost. These devices are priced to compete directly with gate arrays."

Commenting on plans for AT&T's planned next-generation FPGAs and software, Mr. DeMonico said "Today's announcement is just the beginning. We're still on track to deliver the next software release by the end of the summer. And our rollout of the industry's first 0.35-micron FPGAs, with even faster speeds and more cost reductions is also on schedule."

Development work on the software to support the 0.35-micron FPGAs is being done simultaneously at the company's Boulder Development Center in Boulder, Colo.

Meanwhile, the new Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)-compliant 2C04 and 2C06 FPGAs offer 60MHz system speed performance and, like other devices in the ORCA family, feature fast-carry logic and on-chip SRAM in 64-bit logic blocks. The devices are manufactured on both 0.6-micron and 0.5-micron process technology with a 4-input look-up table delay of less than 3.8 nanoseconds. They use nibbleoriented (4-bit) architecture for implementing up to 32-bit (or wider) bus structures, and hierarchical nibble-oriented routing resources said to allow automatic use of internal gates for all device densities.

AT&T is simultaneously rolling out Foundry 7.0--an upgrade to the NeoCAD version 6.1.1 software. Foundry 7.0 supports ATTSIM simulator and macro merging and will automatically be provided to OEMs who purchased previous versions directly from AT&T.

The ATT2C04 and ATT2C06 are available for shipment now, priced at $29.60 and $46.80, respectively, in quantities of 1,000 units. First time AT&T FPGA tools customers can purchase Foundry release 7.0 tools in the ACCESS package, which supports ATT3000 and ORCA up to the 2C04, for $995 for the PC version and $2,995 for the workstation version. A "Catalyst" package, which supports ATT 3000 and ORCA up to the (18,000-gate) 2C15, is priced at $4,995 for the PC version and $9,995 for the workstation version. Additional software is available for higher density devices.