Xilinx, TSMC aim to sample 16nm FinFET based fpgas this year

The fpgas, which will be built on TSMC's 16nm FinFET process, are expected to be sampling later this year, with production devices available in 2014. According to Xilinx, the project – called 'FinFast' -- sees the two companies providing dedicated resources to create a 'one team' approach to optimise TSMC's FinFET process with Xilinx's UltraScale architecture. "I am extremely confident that our 'FinFast' collaboration with TSMC on 16nm will bring the same leadership results that we enjoyed at previous advanced technologies," said Moshe Gavrielov, pictured, Xilinx' president and ceo. "We are committed to TSMC as the clear foundry leader in every dimension – from process technology to design enablement, service, support, quality and delivery." UltraScale is Xilinx' asic class architecture that is designed to scale from 20nm planar to 16nm FinFET technologies and beyond, as well as from monolithic to 3d devices. "We are committed to working with Xilinx to bring the industry's highest performance and highest integration programmable devices quickly to market," said Morris Chang, TSMC's chairman and ceo. "Together, we will deliver world class products on TSMC's 20SoC technology in 2013 and on 16FinFET technology in 2014."