Smarter Systems: The Transition Has Begun

Smarter Systems: The Transition Has Begun

The entire electronics industry is undergoing a transition to smarter systems. The drivers behind this change are all connected to many aspects of system design including efficiency, productivity, security, quality, and of course cost. The enemy is waste. Systems reduce waste when they use only the required resources to deliver only the desired goods and services when and where they are needed. To achieve these goals, systems must be able to obtain, process, and make decisions based on a wide variety of information from remote and local databases, sensor information, and other inputs.

What does this transition mean to system vendors? It means that there must be more decision-making intelligence in every new system. The networks that convey essential information must be transformed from dumb pipes to smart ones. Buildings are becoming smarter so that light and heat are delivered only where needed. Highly integrated networking has come to the factory floor to ensure that every system in the factory has access to critical data needed to make decisions. Robots within these factories combine information from databases with machine vision to become more efficient. Energy grids are becoming smarter so that electricity infrastructures can handle the changing loads of complex societies. Automobiles are becoming smarter through vision systems and wireless communications to increase drivers' safety and to help drivers handle the increasing traffic congestion in urban areas.

Smarts in Everything You Can Imagine

Xilinx is leading the industry to usher in the trend to smarter systems. We call this trend "All Programmable and Smarter Systems" and we have focused on providing hardware- and software-programmable devices and a complete portfolio of SmartCORE IP and system-level expertise to help the rapid design and implementation of smarter systems.

All Programmable and Smarter Systems

For more than 25 years, Xilinx's core competency has been the development of programmable technologies starting with the introduction of the first FPGA. Today's All Programmable FPGAs and SoCs provide unprecedented levels of programmability that is supported by a large and growing portfolio of IP cores, SoC-strength development tools, design specialists with market-specific design expertise, and design services to help you integrate and customize your design solution.

Over the past several years, Xilinx has been making a transition from the leading FPGA vendor to a provider of All Programmable Solutions for Smarter Systems. But just what do those words mean?

It means that the FPGA fabric, the fundamental building block of all Xilinx silicon products—FPGAs, 3D ICs, and SoCs—has reached a critical threshold at the 28nm process node. This threshold marks the transition boundary between "glue logic" and complete systems. At 28nm, Xilinx silicon is capable of replacing entire ASSPs and ASICs, which means that a Xilinx All Programmable device equipped with the right IP and software may well be the only significant integrated circuit needed to implement many end products.