Xilinx considers letting startups cobrand packaged FPGAs

November 04, 2008 //

Recognizing that many fabless chip startups are looking to avoid the cost of developing their own system-on-chip, but wish to create value in design, Xilinx is considering allowing such companies use its field programmable gate arrays as their means of delivery and to cobrand the chips.

MONTREUX, Switzerland — Recognizing that many fabless chip startups are looking to avoid the cost of developing their own system-on-chip, but wish to create value in design, Xilinx is considering allowing such companies use its field programmable gate arrays as their means of delivery and to cobrand the chips.

Xilinx Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) is considering allowing such companies to cobrand its FPGA packages and take the product to the end customer. "It's something we are looking at. We're not in a position to make an announcement," said Larry Getman, a Xilinx executive, speaking at the European Tech Tours Semiconductor Summit here.

At present Xilinx works mainly with intellectual property developers who are expecting to produce a part of a larger design that would be implemented in the FPGA by a third party. Xilinx is therefore used to having the chip vendor's relationship with OEMs.

While system-chip volumes in mobile and consumer electronics can justify the cost of development at the leading edge, for a number of application areas, such as telecom infrastructure, industrial, automotive and aerospace applications, FPGAs can be a more capital efficient and timely way of getting designs into silicon

If Xilinx decides to go down the cobranding route, it would be following a path first highlighted by James Foster, president and CEO of XMOS Semiconductor Ltd. (Bristol, England). He revealed he was discussing allowing other companies to customize XMOS silicon in software and use dual-branding to help them go to market, back in May 2008. XMOS is itself a fabless semiconductor company and has produced its first range of products, including a software-programmable XS-1G CMOS device with four 32-bit processor cores on-chip. XMOS uses the phrase "software-defined silicon" to describe its products.

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