ABSTRACT:

The paper presents the birth of the world first FPGA, called the XC2064. Xilinx and Seiko worked together to solve the whisker issue and a few others, and soon the XC2064, the world's first FPGA, was commercially available. It was the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the two companies. In addition to providing an additional revenue stream to Seiko, running FPGAs with their repetitive structures through the fabs helped Seiko debug subsequent generations of silicon processes and produce greater yields and lower costs for all devices it manufactured. This use of FPGAs as a "process driver" allowed Xilinx access to leading-edge manufacturing technology at Seiko and at other foundries.