Cypress Semiconductor claiming largest FIFO

Electronic News, Oct 27, 1997

San Jose, Calif.--Cypress Semiconductor has staked a claim to what it believes to be the industry's largest FIFO, a one-megabit synchronous first in/first out device which uses industry standard pinout and architecture. The company says the 100MHz Deep Sync device is four times larger than competing synchronous FIFOs.

FIFOs are used to buffer data and allow information to move between devices running at different speeds. A FIFO of this size will have numerous applications in networking, mass storage, video, telecommunications and any other field which involves large files or communication, especially in real time, according to Richard Quon, senior product marketing engineer at Cypress.

Sticking With Standards

Mr. Quon also noted that competing products from Integrated Device Technology no longer use industry standard pinouts as that company moves into higher density levels, Cypress's Deep Sync will offer a larger FIFO using the same sockets as existing devices. This provides designers with a clear upgrade path. "This is the number one advantage of Deep Sync over (IDT)," he asserted.

The product is also designed in a 512-kilobit version. Both are available in volume now, with 10,000-unit prices of $46.15 for the larger device and 35.50 for the smaller one.

These products are all manufactured using 0.5-micron technology, a step down from the 0.65-micron process used for previous generations of FIFOs from Cypress. Next year, Mr. Quon said the company will move to 0.35-micron, which will allow larger Deep Sync products running at 150MHz. The company also plans to release low-power, 3.3-volt synchronous FIFOs later this year.

The FIFO market is estimated to reach $200 million this year, and with growth at nearly 15 percent per year may reach $300 million by 2000. Cypress currently holds an estimated 20 percent of this market, but Mr. Quon said he expected to see that increase.

He stressed that the Cypress FIFOs are targeting areas with the highest growth, including large devices such as the latest Deep Sync, and low-power units to address a growing demand from notebooks and handheld electronics. "We definitely see our share of the market increasing faster than the annual market growth," he said.