ChipX Announces New Structured ASIC Family with Embedded PCI Express PHY

Update: GigOptix, Inc. Announces Acquisition of ChipX (November 10, 2009)

 Silicon-proven PCIe Subsystem Offers High Performance, Low Risk Alternative to Traditional ASIC, FPGA Options

Santa Clara, Ca – October 17, 2005 – ChipX, the Structured ASIC leader, today announced the CX6100 family of Structured ASICs, the latest addition to the company’s growing portfolio of structured ASICs with embedded IP. Fabricated in a high performance, eight-metal 0.13-µm process, the CX6100 devices accelerate time-to-market and eliminate many of the risks associated with traditional standard cell ASIC development by integrating a silicon-proven PCI Express (PCIe) PHY core. At the same time, the new product family offers designers a significantly higher performance, lower power alternative to FPGA-based solutions.

The twelve devices in the new CX6100 structured ASIC family support a wide range of applications in computing, storage, instrumentation and networking. The embedded PCIe PHY is compliant with the current 1.1 version of the specification and is available in 1, 4, and 8 lane options. Along with the embedded PHY, ChipX is offering an optional PCIe-compliant controller. The PHY offers complete PIPE interoperability for customers wishing to use their own PCIe controller.  

“The electronics industry is quickly migrating to PCI-Express, which is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for PCs and embedded applications,” said Wouter Suverkropp, Director of Marketing at ChipX. “But the ongoing evolution of the standard forces designers to rapidly bring to market new iterations of their products to maintain compliance. With an FPGA, you compromise latency, system speed and power; with a standard cell ASIC, development cycles are long and PHY integration risk is high. By embedding a silicon-proven PCIe PHY that is supported by compliance testing and an optional controller, the CX6100 family eliminates the complexity and risk associated with integrating IP from multiple vendors and allows designers to rapidly develop solutions that keep pace with the evolving standard.”

With the optional PCIe 1.0a compliant controller, designers can quickly develop root port, bridge and endpoint designs. The controller supports 1, 4 or 8 lanes, up to 8 VCs and up to 6 BARs. It features configurable retry buffers and support for up to 4 KB payload sizes. The controller is supplied complete with simulation models, driver software examples and all documentation.

Efficient architecture

The new CX6100 family is built on ChipX’s silicon-proven X-Cell architecture. This fine-grain, efficient architecture delivers higher gate densities and lower device costs when compared to programmable devices in smaller geometries. This new ChipX product family can be customized in 2, 3 or 4 layers of metal depending upon the customer’s priority in terms of density and time-to-market.

The twelve devices in the CX6100 family offer densities ranging from 240K to 1.8M ASIC gates, up to 1.1Mbits of embedded SRAM and maximum operating frequencies up to 250MHz across the die. Four on-chip, configurable, low-jitter PLLs support output frequencies from 10 MHz to 1 GHz.  

Pricing and availability

Customers can receive tested prototypes in as little as four weeks. Pricing for the CX6100 devices starts under $7 in volumes of 100,000.
About ChipX

ChipX, Inc., is a pioneer and leading manufacturer of late-stage programmable application-specific integrated circuits, or Structured ASICs. The company's innovative, patented technology consolidates wafer production tooling, reduces time-to-market and minimizes the total cost to profit. ChipX Structured ASIC technology is widely used in consumer equipment, computing peripherals, communication systems, industrial control, medical equipment, instrumentation and military/aerospace systems.
Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, ChipX is a privately held corporation, founded in the U.S. in 1989. A subsidiary, ChipX (Israel) Ltd., performs Research & Development. Investors include Elron Electronic Industries, Ltd., VantagePoint Venture Partners, Wasserstein Venture Capital, Newlight Associates, Parker Price Venture Capital, UMC, Needham Capital Partners and Insite Capital.