Altera Breaks Transistor Mark

Known for their highly integrated field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), Altera Corp. now sets a mark for the record books by fabricating the highest number of transistors for single integrated circuit (IC), with 3.9 billion transistors on the firm's new Stratix V FPGAs. Formed with the 28-nm 28HP semiconductor process from TSMC, these new FPGAs support new levels of performance. "Altera surpassed the known record for transistors when it taped out Stratix V FPGAs at the end of 2010," says Bradley Howe, the company's Vice-President of IC Engineering. "Maintaining the rapid pace set by Moore's Law has allowed programmable logic to remain at the forefront of driving innovations in semiconductor technology. Achieving milestones like this continue to propel FPGAs to new heights of capacity and performance while delivering significantly higher levels of integration."