14 DAY TRIAL // 3D transistors and, one step above, 3D chips are the next step in semiconductor evolution, which must be why TSMC and Xilinx made it a point to launch 3D ICs as quick as they could.
That's right, the two have announced the beginning of mass production for the industry's first heterogeneous 3D ICs.
Said ICs are known as the Virtex-7 HT family and have up to sixteen 28Gbps and seventy-two 13.1Gbps transceivers each.
They are made for high-speed Nx100G and 400G line card applications, found in optical transport networks.
The 28nm devices were developed on TSMC's chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) 3D IC process.
The silicon is scalable, and the integration of multiple components on a single device allows for significant power and performance benefits.
Interestingly enough, the Virtex-7 2000T and Virtex-7 X1140T series have actually been in volume production since earlier this year (2013), and only Virtex-7 HT FPGAs are starting now.