Xilinx pushes Zynq-7000 to 1GHz on TSMC 28nm process

Xilinx says it has increased the top processing performance spec of its Zynq-7000 programmable SoC devices to 1GHz.

This is a 25% increase over initial specifications for the two largest Zynq-7000 devices.
Target applications are likely to be in high-end image and graphic processing applications within the medical, aerospace and defence markets.
“A significant factor behind our ability to take the Zynq-7000 family to 1GHz is Xilinx’s choice of TSMC’s 28nm HPL process, which we are using for our entire 28nm generation to bring the value of low-power with high-performance to customers,” said Vidya Rajagopalan, Xilinx’s vice president of processing solutions.
Based around an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processing system, the Zynq-7045 device is the largest member of Xilinx’s family of All Programmable SoCs with more than 5 million equivalent Asic gates (350k logic cells), sixteen 12.5Gbit/s serial transceivers and 1334 GMACS of peak DSP performance.

The Zynq-7045 devices pushes programmable systems integration a step further by providing a hard PCIe Gen2 x8 block, (PCIe x8 Gen3 can be implemented using a soft core in the programmable logic), with high performance SelectIO technology supporting up to 1866Mbit/s for additional DDR3 memory interfaces and 1.6Gbit/s for LVDS interfaces in DDR mode.
Zynq-7010 devices are also available in the CLG225 package measuring 13 x 13mm.
Zynq-7045 devices are currently shipping to select Early Access customers. Broader availability will begin next quarter.