Subject: Xilinx claims the "world's first" 28 nm FPGA, the Kintex-7 K325T

Using TSMC's 28 nm HPL process, Xilinx recently announced it has shipped the
"world's first" 28 nm FPGA, their Kintex-7 K325T.

The K325T datasheet claims:

   - 326,080 logic cells, 407,600 CLB FFs, and 16,020 K bits RAM
   - 500 max single ended I/O or 240 max differential I/O pairs
   - 10 clocks with CMTs of 1 MMCM and 1 PLL each.
   - 16 GTX 12.5 Gb/sec tranceivers
   - 840 DSP48E1 slices
   - 1.0 volt and 0.9 volts
   - "less than 12 watts"
   - commercial -1, -2; extended -2L, -3; industrial -1, -2
   - packaging in FPG676 and FPG900
   - ISE development tools

For an ASIC designer this roughly translates to a 2 million gate ASIC
running at 400 Mhz at most (most likely ~200 Mhz); this is not including
memory and multipliers that are included in the FPGA.  This is assuming
60% utilization.

"This is the second largest device of their 'cheap' family of FPGAs," said
Mike Dini of the Dini Group.  "For price-to-performance, the K325T is quite
good.  It's DRAM I/O performance is 2X faster than the Virtex-6.  We use it
for for high performance computing because we found it be 4X to 10X better
in the other parameters we benchmarked compared to the XC6SLX150."

"But I wouldn't use it for ASIC protyping nor low power, because it doesn't
have enough pins," warned Mike.  "Plus I'd expect it to run at 25 watts when
fully untilized."

The Xilinx Kintex-7 K325T is only at the initial sample stage.  There's no
hard news as to when general shipments of the K325T will begin.