Tabula (company)
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Tabula, Inc., was an American fabless
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
company based in
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
. Founded in 2003 by Steve Teig (ex- CTO of
Cadence In Classical music, Western musical theory, a cadence () is the end of a Phrase (music), phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution (music), resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards.Don ...
), it raised $215 million in
venture funding A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the p ...
. The company designed and built
three dimensional In geometry, a three-dimensional space (3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a mathematical space in which three values ('' coordinates'') are required to determine the position of a point. Most commonly, it is the three- ...
field programmable gate arrays (3-D
FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of a ...
s) and ranked third on the Wall Street Journal's annual "Next Big Thing" list in 2012.


Products

Tabula developed ABAX, a family of
three-dimensional integrated circuit A three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) is a MOSFET, MOS (metal-oxide semiconductor) integrated circuit (IC) manufactured by stacking as many as 16 or more ICs and interconnecting them vertically using, for instance, through-silicon vias (TS ...
s. The company's field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips were marketed as 3-D
programmable logic device A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, the function of a PLD is undefined at the time of m ...
s or 3PLDs. The chips have 220-630 thousand 4-input
lookup table In computer science, a lookup table (LUT) is an array data structure, array that replaces runtime (program lifecycle phase), runtime computation of a mathematical function (mathematics), function with a simpler array indexing operation, in a proc ...
(LUT) from the user point of view and are capable of working at 1.6 GHz physical clock speed. They also contain up to 1280
digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are a ...
(DSP) blocks with 18x18 multipliers with pre-adder; up to 920
GPIO A general-purpose input/output (GPIO) is an uncommitted digital signal pin on an integrated circuit or electronic circuit (e.g. MCUs/ MPUs) board that can be used as an input or output, or both, and is controllable by software. GPIOs have no p ...
pins and 48
SerDes A Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) is a pair of functional blocks commonly used in high speed communications to compensate for limited input/output. These blocks convert data between serial data and parallel interfaces in each direction. The ter ...
channels (up to 6.5 Gbit/s). ABAX are produced using 40 nm
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
process and packaged in
flip-chip Flip chip, also known as controlled collapse chip connection or its abbreviation, C4, is a method for interconnecting Die (integrated circuit), dies such as semiconductor devices, Integrated circuit, IC chips, integrated passive devices and micr ...
packages with 1936 or 1156 pins. Internally, ABAX chips use high-frequency (1.6 GHz) reconfiguration between up to 8 config states, named ''folds'', to emulate a high number of FPGA-resources. If all 8 folds are used to get maximum LUT capacity, user visible clock speed will be 200 MHz; for 4 folds capacity is halved but frequency is doubled and so on. Volume price of ABAX chips was planned in 2012 to be in the range of 100-200 USD. Tabula also offered some network solutions, such as: 100 or 40 Gb Ethernet to
Interlaken Interlaken (; lit.: ''between lakes'') is a Swiss town and municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern. It is an important and well-known tourist destination in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss ...
bridges; high-speed packet search engines; and multiport 10 gigabit Ethernet processors (which could be used as switch, router, or programmable
NIC Nic is a gender-neutral given name, often short for Nicole, Nicholas, Nicola, or Dominic. It is also a component of Irish-language female surnames. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Nic Dalton (born 1964), Australian musician * Nic En ...
). In February 2012, Tabula confirmed it would use 22-nm manufacturing process on
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
's Factories. As of July 2013, only 5 companies were allowed to use Intel's manufacturing process: Achronix; Tabula;
Netronome Netronome is a privately held fabless semiconductor company specializing in the design of network flow processors used for intelligent flow processing in network and communications devices, such as switches, routers and cyber security applications ...
;
Microsemi Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-ba ...
; and
Altera Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2025 as a company focused on developm ...
.Rogoway, Mike (2013-07-27). Intel dabbles in contract manufacturing, weighing tradeoffs. The Oregonian, July 27, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2013/07/intel_dabbles_in_contract_manu.html. ''Spacetime'' was a product of Tabula that possibly went beyond the abilities of FPGAs. The company said that Spacetime represented two spatial dimensions and one time dimension as a unified 3D framework. According to Tabula, this appeared to be a simplification that might deliver in production a new category of programmable devices (“3PLDs”) that are denser, faster, and more capable than FPGAs, yet still accompanied by software that automatically maps traditional RTL onto these novel fabrics. On 24 March 2015, Tabula officially shut down.Donato-Weinstein, Nathan (2015-02-11). Tabula to shut down; 120 jobs lost at fabless chip company. Silicon Valley Business Journal, 11 February 2015. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/02/11/tabula-to-shut-down-120-jobs-lost-at-fabless-chip.html.


See also

*
Altera Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2025 as a company focused on developm ...
*
Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is renowned for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also pioneered ...
* Achronix


References


External links

*
Steve Teig Lecture on Tabula and Entrepreneurship to Stanford University Students
2013.10.23
Steve Teig Lecture on Spacetime 3D Programmable Integrated Circuits
(11 min), 2012.06.18
Steve Teig Lecture on Spacetime 3D Programmable Integrated Circuits
(61 min), 2012.10.07 {{Programmable Logic Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Electronic design automation companies Reconfigurable computing Manufacturing companies based in California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Santa Clara, California Electronics companies established in 2003 Electronics companies disestablished in 2015 2003 establishments in California 2015 disestablishments in California Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies