High-performance, high-capacity Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) from the XC4000E Series offer the advantages of custom CMOS VLSI without the high upfront cost, protracted development time, or inherent danger of a traditional masked gate array. These FPGAs, which are the outcome of thirteen years of FPGA design experience and feedback from thousands of customers, combine architectural flexibility, on-chip Select-RAM memory with edge-triggered and dual-port modes, increased speed, a wealth of routing resources, and new, sophisticated software to achieve fully automated implementation of intricate, high-density, high-performance designs.
The intrinsic performance of XC4000E devices can surpass 150 MHz, and they can operate at synchronous system clock speeds of up to 80 MHz. Performance gains over the previous groups can be attributed to advancements in system architecture and device processing. Devices from the XC4000E Series employ a multi-layer metal sub-micron technology. Moreover, other architectural upgrades have been done, as will be mentioned below. An XC4000E device can be configured using existing XC4000 bitstreams. Although the devices are pin-for-pin compatible, XC4000A bitstreams must be recompiled for usage with the XC4000E due to better routing resources.
