Xilinx ships 16nm chips ahead of schedule

Xilinx has announced it is shipping 16nm multiprocessor SoCs (MPSoC) to customers a quarter ahead of schedule. The early release of the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC enables Xilinx customers to begin designing and delivering MPSoC-based systems today.

Built using TSMC's 16FF+ process, the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC enables the development of next-generation embedded vision, ADAS, I-IoT and communications systems by providing 5X system-level performance/watt and any-to-any connectivity with the security and safety required for next-generation systems, Xilinx noted.

The Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC is the industry's first heterogeneous MPSoC using TSMC's 16FF+ process, Xilinx claimed. The Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs combine seven user programmable processors including a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 application processing unit, a 32-bit dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 real time processing unit, and an ARM Mali-400 graphics processing unit. The family also includes a host of integrated peripherals, safety and security features, and advanced power management. When coupled with the SDSoC development environment, the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC family enables systems that are both software defined and hardware optimized.

Initial all programmable Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC devices are shipping now with general sampling beginning in the first quarter of 2016, according to Xilinx.