Triad Semiconductor Announces 1-Million Gate Plus Analog Configurable Array

New Array can replace an entire board of FPGAs, Micros and analog with a Single Chip

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 25, 2011 – Triad Semiconductor Inc., the industry’s leading supplier of configurable mixed-signal ASICs, today announced the availability of its largest configurable array to date – VCA-6. The VCA-6 combines precision, high performance analog resources (more than 100 op-amps) with over a million ASIC gates on a single configurable device allowing designers to sweep up an entire board of components into a single ASIC. The VCA-6 is fabricated on IBM’s 0.18-micron 7RF process optimized for mixed signal performance and digital integration. With onshore fabrication and a complete ITAR design and supply chain, Triad and the VCA-6 are an excellent choice for defense applications seeking a cost effective way to secure design IP and manage long-term supply requirements. Applications benefiting from integration onto a VCA-6 include: software defined radio, sonar, smart sensor fusion, FPGA plus analog replacement, UAV controllers and designs needing obsolescence or end of life (EOL) replacement solutions.

“Size, weight and Power, or SWaP, are mission critical concerns for designers in the military, aerospace, industrial and portable medical markets.” said Reid Wender, vice president of marketing at Triad Semiconductor. “The VCA-6 enables designers to replace power-hungry FPGAs and an entire board full of discrete analog parts with a lower power, single chip solution.” The VCA-6 is based on Triad’s silicon-proven via-configurable array (VCA) technology, which allows designers to quickly and inexpensively customize analog, and digital features with lower power consumption and greater system cost savings than previous ASIC solutions.

Technical Highlights

The VCA-6 contains 320 configurable logic tiles. Each tile contains 3,150 NAND2 equivalent ASIC gates providing the array with a total of 1,008,000 ASIC gates. Unlike FPGAs, VCA-6 logic gates are not “equivalent system gates” but actual standard-cell gate primitives providing the size, performance, and power profile typical of a standard-cell digital ASIC implementation. Each logic tile also contains a 4,608-bit 2-port static RAM organized as 128 words by 36-bits. The array also contains a total of 160 Kbytes of via configurable non-volatile read-only memory (ROM) arranged as 160 1K x 8 ROMs. The distributed RAM and ROM resources can be configured into larger composite memories using Triad’s ViaWare™ memory generator. The VCA-6 has over 100 op-amps with each op-amp surrounded by configurable collections of resistors, capacitors, transistors, and switches. The analog resources are arranged into single-ended analog tiles, fully differential analog tiles, resistive DAC tiles, bias tiles, and current steering DAC tiles. A single Via-Only™ mask layer change configures and interconnects these analog and digital resources into a wide range of mixed signal circuits. If the design can be conceived of as an interconnection of op-amps, resistors, capacitors, logic and memory then the design can be implemented on a Triad VCA.

About Triad Semiconductor, Inc.

Triad Semiconductor, Inc., a privately held fabless semiconductor company with headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, develops and produces configurable mixed-signal ASICs. The company’s groundbreaking via-configurable array (VCA) technology delivers ASICs with silicon-proven analog and digital functions more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional full-custom approaches. Triad’s single-mask, Via-Only™ routing cuts engineering effort and fabrication time, resulting in fast-turn prototypes and allowing design changes to be made at minimal cost. For more information, please visit www.triadsemi.com or call (336) 774-2150.