1.5x Energy-Efficient and 1.4x Operation-Speed Via-Switch FPGA with Rapid and Low-Cost ASIC Migration by Via-Switch Copy

Abstract

1.5x energy-efficient and 1.4x operation-speed, nonvolatile via-switch (VS) FPGA with atom switch and a-Si/SiN/a-Si varistor is demonstrated in a 65nm-node for various basic applications. For rapid and low-cost migration from VS-FPGA to ASIC, “hard-via” to replace VS with “ON”, named VS-copy (VSC), is newly proposed. The VSC-ASIC is fabricated by sharing all the photo masks with VS-FPGA excepting one via mask revise and three VS masks skip, realizing an exact design copy with minimum NRE cost and TAT. The VS-FPGA equipped with the VSC gives energy-efficient edge device, e.g., for up-to-date AI inference algorithms, covering a wide range of chip volume with extremely low cost.