Hardware Podcasts

An Interview with Philip Freidin - Xenodochial Xilinx Ex-Employee

The Amp Hour · 9 Jul 2012 · 1h 22m · Episode 103

What this episode covers

Philip Freidin, a consultant and former employee of AMD and Xilinx, discusses his career in chip design, starting with the development of the AMD 29000 RISC CPU and the decline of the BitSlice architecture. He details the technical challenges of designing early FPGAs at Xilinx, specifically the complexity of routing logic and the strategic decision to use Configurable Logic Blocks (CLBs). Freidin analyzes the competitive landscape of the programmable logic industry, explaining why startups fail to compete with giants like Xilinx and Altera due to high barriers to entry, and discusses the future of hard silicon blocks within FPGAs.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
AMD, Xilinx, Altera, Intel, TSMC, NVIDIA, ATI, Lattice, Actel
Products
29000, 2901, 3000 series, Papilo
Also
Ross Freeman

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