According to Xilinx (San Jose, Calif.), EasyPath-6 FPGAs do not require minimum order quantities and can be delivered in just six weeks. EasyPath-6s deliver a 35 percent cost reduction compared to the FPGA price at equivalent volume, according to the company.

EasyPath devices are neither an ASIC conversion—like Altera Corp.'s HardCopy devices—or a routing-hardened FPGA, according to Xilinx. The migration from Virtex-6 to EasyPath-6 devices involves no additional design constraints, no re-work or re-optimizing of the FPGA design, and no re-laying out of circuit boards, the company said.

After a customer provides its design files, Xilinx tests silicon wafers to the same electrical parameters as the standard FPGAs and then sorts the devices relative to the specific resources used by the customer's design, Xilinx said. The resulting die are then assembled, marked and final-tested to ensure functionality and performance within six weeks, the company said.

EasyPath-6 supports all devices, all packages, all speed grades and all temperature grades available in the Virtex-6 base family, according to Xilinx. Customers can chose any Virtex-6 LX, LXT, SXT, or HXT device to implement and cost reduce their designs, according to the company. EasyPath-6 FPGAs are architecturally identical to Virtex-6s, Xilinx said.

EasyPath-6 FPGAs are available for design implementation effective immediately with production devices available in calendar the fourth quarter of 2010, Xilinx said.