What is the meaning behind the Company's name Tabula?
What is the meaning behind the Company's product name ABAX?
Who Founded Tabula?
Who is the Tabula CEO?
How much money has Tabula raised? Who are Tabula's primary investors?
Why did Tabula decide to wait so long to come out of stealth mode?
What is the problem Tabula is solving?
What markets will Tabula serve? What is driving those markets?
The idea of reconfiguration is not new. What is Tabula doing that is different?
What does Tabula mean when it says "Hide the Revolution"?
Do FPGA and ASIC designers have to change their design methodology and flow to use Tabula's ABAX 3PLD devices?
What is the meaning behind the Company's software name STYLUS?
Describe the advantages ABAX has over high-end FPGAs?
Why does Tabula think it is creating a new category of programmable logic device?
How long has Tabula been working on their ABAX 3PLD?
What is Tabula's hope for its Spacetime technology?
What is the meaning behind the Company's name Tabula?
Our Company name, Tabula, is derived from the Latin Tabula Rasa, which means "blank slate". We have chosen the name "Tabula" because our devices are, in effect, "blank slates" for turning ideas into production silicon. In addition, at Tabula we have taken a fresh, "blank slate" approach in creating the next stage of custom logic design.
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What is the meaning behind the Company's product name ABAX?
ABAX is the Greek word for the Latin Abacus and was an ancient calculating tool made of sand. In ancient civilizations, people used an ABAX which consisted of a table covered with sand to write and erase their calculations. Similar to the ancient ABAX, Tabula's ABAX is a "tray of sand". Customers can use Tabula's devices to run their "calculations" while having the ability to make changes to those calculations freely because ABAX is programmable.
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Who Founded Tabula?
Steve Teig founded Tabula in 2003. Prior to founding Tabula, Steve Teig was CTO of Cadence Design Systems. Steve joined Cadence through its acquisition of Simplex Solutions (NSDQ: SPLX), where he was also CTO. At Simplex, Steve invented and led the technology development for the X Architecture, which radically improves chip design by pervasively incorporating diagonal wiring.
Before joining Simplex, Steve co-founded two successful biotechnology companies: CombiChem (NSDQ: CCHM, later acquired by DuPont Pharmaceuticals), where he was CTO, and BioCAD, where he was CTO and, later, CEO. At CombiChem, Steve invented and led the development of the company's revolutionary Discovery Engine technology, with which CombiChem discovered pharmaceutical-lead compounds for 11 different therapeutic areas in only five years. At BioCAD, Steve designed Catalyst, which is still the leading software used worldwide for pharmaceutical discovery.
In the 1980s, Steve spent several years in the EDA industry, where his work had a major impact still felt today. First, at Trilogy Systems, he invented the now-universal technique of compiled-code logic simulation. Then, as CTO and co-founder of Tangent Systems (which later became Cadence's very first acquisition), he invented the principal place-and-route algorithms for the Tancell and Tangate products. These techniques form the core of Cadence's Gate Ensemble, Cell-3 Ensemble, and Silicon Ensemble systems and underlie most of today's other physical design systems as well.
Steve received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. He holds over 200 patents. In 2002, he broke Thomas Edison's record for the number of patents filed by an individual in a single year.
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Who is the Tabula CEO?
Tabula is led by Dennis Segers. Dennis Segers joined Tabula in May 2006 after serving as an independent board member for two years. Prior to Tabula he served as president, CEO, and director of Matrix Semiconductor. Matrix pioneered the design and development of three-dimensional integrated circuits, a first in the history of semiconductor technology. At Matrix, Dennis oversaw the transition of the company from the early technology feasibility phase to high volume production, culminating in the acquisition of the company by SanDisk in January 2006.
Previously, Dennis served as the senior vice president and general manager of the FPGA product groups at Xilinx. He oversaw the development and introduction of the Virtex family of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the most successful programmable logic family in the industry's history. Under his direction the high end FPGA division grew from a $300M business to over $1.4B. In April 2000 he was elected to the Xilinx board of directors.
A 30-year industry veteran, Dennis began his career at Mostek Corporation as a product development engineer for Mostek's 16K DRAMs. He has held a variety of management positions in circuit design, process technology, and product development. Throughout his career Dennis has overseen the successful development and market introduction of over 40 products and technologies in a wide range of IC businesses including; memory, logic, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs).
He has served as a board member and advisor to numerous venture capital backed startups and public companies. Dennis is currently a director for Azuro, Inc., a privately held EDA company, and Parade Technologies, Ltd., a private fabless semiconductor company. A past member of the board of directors of the Fabless Semiconductor Association (now the Global Semiconductor Alliance, GSA), Dennis currently serves as the Chairman of the GSA Emerging Company CEO Council.
Dennis received a BS Electrical Engineering degree from Texas A&M in 1975. He is a member of the College of Engineering Advisory Board, and was a 2008 Outstanding Alumni Award recipient.
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How much money has Tabula raised? Who are Tabula's primary investors?
Tabula has raised $214M of venture capital. Most recently, the Company completed at $108M round of Series D financing in March 2011. Previously, the Company completed a $50M financing in August 2007 and $24M financing in November 2008 in Series C. Tabula is backed by premier venture capital firms including DAG, Crosslink Capital, Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, NEA, Integral Capital, and Balderton Capital.
back to top
Why did Tabula decide to wait so long to come out of stealth mode?
Tabula feels it is the easiest thing in the world to go out and brag to the press in PowerPoint and we didn't want to be one of those companies. Tabula wanted to wait until we had real production silicon in use by real customers before we made any announcements. Tabula is at that stage now. Tabula has software and 40nm production devices in customer hands today.
back to top
What is the problem Tabula is solving?
Electronics companies want a silicon solution that allows them to explore new product ideas easily, implement them rapidly, and ramp to production immediately and profitably.
To date, these companies have been forced to choose between two inadequate solutions - FPGAs and ASICs.
Tabula's Solution:
Based on the Spacetime architecture, we are delivering ABAX, a family of devices that provide:
What markets will Tabula serve? What is driving those markets?
Tabula's 3PLD ABAX products are general purpose and can serve a wide variety of markets including telecom, networking, storage, consumer, industrial, medical, automotive, broadcast, aerospace and military. In these markets, they can replace FPGAs, ASICs and ASSPs, and address a SAM in the tune of $50B. However, Tabula is initially targeting the Telecom, Wireless, and Network Infrastructure markets that represent a $1.4B FPGA SAM for Tabula today (projected to grow to $2B by 2013). Wireless network upgrades to 4G (LTE, EPC, WiMax) to support the demand for bandwidth caused by the proliferation of smart phones is a major market driver. Other market drivers include the upgrade to 40G/100G Ethernet, fixed mobile convergence, and the onset of service providers offering video networks and IPTV. As the company grows we will address a growing range of markets. The price/ performance gains achieved by Spacetime will enable us to extend the usage of programmable logic into applications traditionally served only by ASICs and ASSPs.
back to top
The idea of reconfiguration is not new. What is Tabula doing that is different?
Tabula differs in at least two important ways. One, Tabula's ABAX device is reconfiguring thousands of times faster than anybody before them. But that is not the most important difference. Much more important is why we reconfigure and how the customer leverages that reconfiguration. To Tabula, reconfiguration is a technique to solve the interconnect problem which makes FPGAs costly and limits their performance. Tabula also completely hides reconfiguration from the user. Tabula does not present their device as a reconfigurable device even though that's what's happening under the covers. From a user point of view, it's a 3D device and we emulate that 3D device perfectly. No matter what you do as a user, you can't tell the difference between the Tabula device and a 3D device. In that sense, Tabula is using reconfiguration as a trick and not presenting it as a user feature. Making this possible necessitated years of innovation and of product development efforts. We are now at the point where this is available to our customers.
back to top
What does Tabula mean when it says "Hide the Revolution"?
Tabula has made its chip, despite using the revolutionary Spacetime architecture, to look completely familiar to the designer. The ABAX chip is programmable in the way an FPGA is programmable. As a result, designers can use the same design flow and the same RTL they are already familiar with. There is no learning curve required. The user isn't interacting at all with the very high speed reconfiguration that is going on, and is not exposed to it.
back to top
Do FPGA and ASIC designers have to change their design methodology and flow to use Tabula's ABAX 3PLD devices?
No. there is no learning curve required to use Tabula ABAX 3PLDs. Our design inputs are standard Verilog/VHDL, with standard SDC timing constraints.
back to top
Describe the advantages ABAX has over high-end FPGAs?
Our ABAX 3PLD devices provide close to 3x logic density, 2x memory density, 3x memory throughput and 4x DSP performance compared to FPGAs, at a fraction of the cost. This enables customers to access unmatched programmable capabilities for $200 or less, in volume.
back to top
What is the meaning behind the Company's software name STYLUS?
The word Stylus came from the Latin word stilus meaning: A pointed instrument, used by the Romans, for writing or recording impressions upon waxed tablets. Similar to the ancient Stylus, Tabula's Stylus is a writing tool. Customers use our Stylus software to write their "calculations" on our ABAX blank slate devices having the ability to make changes to those calculations freely because ABAX is programmable.
back to top
Why does Tabula think it is creating a new category of programmable logic device?
We call our devices 3PLDs. Tabula has such a significant price / performance jump that we think it's legitimate to call this a new category. This is similar to what happened when the industry went from CPLDs to FPGAs where the price performance jump was so large that they distinguished as two different categories of product even though they were both programmable devices. We believe we are the next step in this evolution with the introduction of the first 3PLD: 3D programmable logic device.
back to top
How long has Tabula been working on their ABAX 3PLD?
Tabula taped our first 40nm test chip in 2007. The purpose was to see Spacetime in actual silicon. It helped verify and improve the high performance fabric and to see what a great Spacetime architecture really looked like. Tabula also taped-out a 40nm I/O test chip in 2008 to verify and fine-tune its high performance 6.5Gb/s SerDes. Tabula then put everything together with ABAX in its first production device. This is the ABAX 04 which is in customer hands today.
back to top
What is Tabula's hope for its Spacetime technology?
Tabula believes that the Spacetime technology will enable a renaissance of innovation. It will make it possible for anyone with a great idea to turn this idea into production silicon, take it to market quickly with minimum up-front investment, and to have a solution cost compatible with volume production.
Such an advance will benefit everyone, from the world largest OEMs which are facing intense competitive pressures, to the individual entrepreneurs for whom the cost of developing a custom logic solution has become prohibitive.
back to top
What is the meaning behind the Company's product name ABAX?
Who Founded Tabula?
Who is the Tabula CEO?
How much money has Tabula raised? Who are Tabula's primary investors?
Why did Tabula decide to wait so long to come out of stealth mode?
What is the problem Tabula is solving?
What markets will Tabula serve? What is driving those markets?
The idea of reconfiguration is not new. What is Tabula doing that is different?
What does Tabula mean when it says "Hide the Revolution"?
Do FPGA and ASIC designers have to change their design methodology and flow to use Tabula's ABAX 3PLD devices?
What is the meaning behind the Company's software name STYLUS?
Describe the advantages ABAX has over high-end FPGAs?
Why does Tabula think it is creating a new category of programmable logic device?
How long has Tabula been working on their ABAX 3PLD?
What is Tabula's hope for its Spacetime technology?
What is the meaning behind the Company's name Tabula?
Our Company name, Tabula, is derived from the Latin Tabula Rasa, which means "blank slate". We have chosen the name "Tabula" because our devices are, in effect, "blank slates" for turning ideas into production silicon. In addition, at Tabula we have taken a fresh, "blank slate" approach in creating the next stage of custom logic design.
back to top
What is the meaning behind the Company's product name ABAX?
ABAX is the Greek word for the Latin Abacus and was an ancient calculating tool made of sand. In ancient civilizations, people used an ABAX which consisted of a table covered with sand to write and erase their calculations. Similar to the ancient ABAX, Tabula's ABAX is a "tray of sand". Customers can use Tabula's devices to run their "calculations" while having the ability to make changes to those calculations freely because ABAX is programmable.
back to top
Who Founded Tabula?
Steve Teig founded Tabula in 2003. Prior to founding Tabula, Steve Teig was CTO of Cadence Design Systems. Steve joined Cadence through its acquisition of Simplex Solutions (NSDQ: SPLX), where he was also CTO. At Simplex, Steve invented and led the technology development for the X Architecture, which radically improves chip design by pervasively incorporating diagonal wiring.
Before joining Simplex, Steve co-founded two successful biotechnology companies: CombiChem (NSDQ: CCHM, later acquired by DuPont Pharmaceuticals), where he was CTO, and BioCAD, where he was CTO and, later, CEO. At CombiChem, Steve invented and led the development of the company's revolutionary Discovery Engine technology, with which CombiChem discovered pharmaceutical-lead compounds for 11 different therapeutic areas in only five years. At BioCAD, Steve designed Catalyst, which is still the leading software used worldwide for pharmaceutical discovery.
In the 1980s, Steve spent several years in the EDA industry, where his work had a major impact still felt today. First, at Trilogy Systems, he invented the now-universal technique of compiled-code logic simulation. Then, as CTO and co-founder of Tangent Systems (which later became Cadence's very first acquisition), he invented the principal place-and-route algorithms for the Tancell and Tangate products. These techniques form the core of Cadence's Gate Ensemble, Cell-3 Ensemble, and Silicon Ensemble systems and underlie most of today's other physical design systems as well.
Steve received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. He holds over 200 patents. In 2002, he broke Thomas Edison's record for the number of patents filed by an individual in a single year.
back to top
Who is the Tabula CEO?
Tabula is led by Dennis Segers. Dennis Segers joined Tabula in May 2006 after serving as an independent board member for two years. Prior to Tabula he served as president, CEO, and director of Matrix Semiconductor. Matrix pioneered the design and development of three-dimensional integrated circuits, a first in the history of semiconductor technology. At Matrix, Dennis oversaw the transition of the company from the early technology feasibility phase to high volume production, culminating in the acquisition of the company by SanDisk in January 2006.
Previously, Dennis served as the senior vice president and general manager of the FPGA product groups at Xilinx. He oversaw the development and introduction of the Virtex family of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the most successful programmable logic family in the industry's history. Under his direction the high end FPGA division grew from a $300M business to over $1.4B. In April 2000 he was elected to the Xilinx board of directors.
A 30-year industry veteran, Dennis began his career at Mostek Corporation as a product development engineer for Mostek's 16K DRAMs. He has held a variety of management positions in circuit design, process technology, and product development. Throughout his career Dennis has overseen the successful development and market introduction of over 40 products and technologies in a wide range of IC businesses including; memory, logic, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs).
He has served as a board member and advisor to numerous venture capital backed startups and public companies. Dennis is currently a director for Azuro, Inc., a privately held EDA company, and Parade Technologies, Ltd., a private fabless semiconductor company. A past member of the board of directors of the Fabless Semiconductor Association (now the Global Semiconductor Alliance, GSA), Dennis currently serves as the Chairman of the GSA Emerging Company CEO Council.
Dennis received a BS Electrical Engineering degree from Texas A&M in 1975. He is a member of the College of Engineering Advisory Board, and was a 2008 Outstanding Alumni Award recipient.
back to top
How much money has Tabula raised? Who are Tabula's primary investors?
Tabula has raised $214M of venture capital. Most recently, the Company completed at $108M round of Series D financing in March 2011. Previously, the Company completed a $50M financing in August 2007 and $24M financing in November 2008 in Series C. Tabula is backed by premier venture capital firms including DAG, Crosslink Capital, Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, NEA, Integral Capital, and Balderton Capital.
back to top
Why did Tabula decide to wait so long to come out of stealth mode?
Tabula feels it is the easiest thing in the world to go out and brag to the press in PowerPoint and we didn't want to be one of those companies. Tabula wanted to wait until we had real production silicon in use by real customers before we made any announcements. Tabula is at that stage now. Tabula has software and 40nm production devices in customer hands today.
back to top
What is the problem Tabula is solving?
Electronics companies want a silicon solution that allows them to explore new product ideas easily, implement them rapidly, and ramp to production immediately and profitably.
To date, these companies have been forced to choose between two inadequate solutions - FPGAs and ASICs.
- FPGAs are flexible since they are programmable, but they are much too expensive and cannot be used for any real production quantity. In addition, their modest performance and density severely limits their range of applications to prototyping and low-volume production.
- ASICs deliver low unit price and high performance and density. Unfortunately, they are very costly to develop. They also require an extremely long time to develop: 24 months or more, depending on the number of re-spins required. Just as significantly, the finished product is brittle and fixed in its functionality.
Tabula's Solution:
Based on the Spacetime architecture, we are delivering ABAX, a family of devices that provide:
- Re-programmability of FPGA: at the designers' desk and in the field
- ASIC-like capabilities
- A cost effective solution, even in high volume
What markets will Tabula serve? What is driving those markets?
Tabula's 3PLD ABAX products are general purpose and can serve a wide variety of markets including telecom, networking, storage, consumer, industrial, medical, automotive, broadcast, aerospace and military. In these markets, they can replace FPGAs, ASICs and ASSPs, and address a SAM in the tune of $50B. However, Tabula is initially targeting the Telecom, Wireless, and Network Infrastructure markets that represent a $1.4B FPGA SAM for Tabula today (projected to grow to $2B by 2013). Wireless network upgrades to 4G (LTE, EPC, WiMax) to support the demand for bandwidth caused by the proliferation of smart phones is a major market driver. Other market drivers include the upgrade to 40G/100G Ethernet, fixed mobile convergence, and the onset of service providers offering video networks and IPTV. As the company grows we will address a growing range of markets. The price/ performance gains achieved by Spacetime will enable us to extend the usage of programmable logic into applications traditionally served only by ASICs and ASSPs.
back to top
The idea of reconfiguration is not new. What is Tabula doing that is different?
Tabula differs in at least two important ways. One, Tabula's ABAX device is reconfiguring thousands of times faster than anybody before them. But that is not the most important difference. Much more important is why we reconfigure and how the customer leverages that reconfiguration. To Tabula, reconfiguration is a technique to solve the interconnect problem which makes FPGAs costly and limits their performance. Tabula also completely hides reconfiguration from the user. Tabula does not present their device as a reconfigurable device even though that's what's happening under the covers. From a user point of view, it's a 3D device and we emulate that 3D device perfectly. No matter what you do as a user, you can't tell the difference between the Tabula device and a 3D device. In that sense, Tabula is using reconfiguration as a trick and not presenting it as a user feature. Making this possible necessitated years of innovation and of product development efforts. We are now at the point where this is available to our customers.
back to top
What does Tabula mean when it says "Hide the Revolution"?
Tabula has made its chip, despite using the revolutionary Spacetime architecture, to look completely familiar to the designer. The ABAX chip is programmable in the way an FPGA is programmable. As a result, designers can use the same design flow and the same RTL they are already familiar with. There is no learning curve required. The user isn't interacting at all with the very high speed reconfiguration that is going on, and is not exposed to it.
back to top
Do FPGA and ASIC designers have to change their design methodology and flow to use Tabula's ABAX 3PLD devices?
No. there is no learning curve required to use Tabula ABAX 3PLDs. Our design inputs are standard Verilog/VHDL, with standard SDC timing constraints.
back to top
Describe the advantages ABAX has over high-end FPGAs?
Our ABAX 3PLD devices provide close to 3x logic density, 2x memory density, 3x memory throughput and 4x DSP performance compared to FPGAs, at a fraction of the cost. This enables customers to access unmatched programmable capabilities for $200 or less, in volume.
back to top
What is the meaning behind the Company's software name STYLUS?
The word Stylus came from the Latin word stilus meaning: A pointed instrument, used by the Romans, for writing or recording impressions upon waxed tablets. Similar to the ancient Stylus, Tabula's Stylus is a writing tool. Customers use our Stylus software to write their "calculations" on our ABAX blank slate devices having the ability to make changes to those calculations freely because ABAX is programmable.
back to top
Why does Tabula think it is creating a new category of programmable logic device?
We call our devices 3PLDs. Tabula has such a significant price / performance jump that we think it's legitimate to call this a new category. This is similar to what happened when the industry went from CPLDs to FPGAs where the price performance jump was so large that they distinguished as two different categories of product even though they were both programmable devices. We believe we are the next step in this evolution with the introduction of the first 3PLD: 3D programmable logic device.
back to top
How long has Tabula been working on their ABAX 3PLD?
Tabula taped our first 40nm test chip in 2007. The purpose was to see Spacetime in actual silicon. It helped verify and improve the high performance fabric and to see what a great Spacetime architecture really looked like. Tabula also taped-out a 40nm I/O test chip in 2008 to verify and fine-tune its high performance 6.5Gb/s SerDes. Tabula then put everything together with ABAX in its first production device. This is the ABAX 04 which is in customer hands today.
back to top
What is Tabula's hope for its Spacetime technology?
Tabula believes that the Spacetime technology will enable a renaissance of innovation. It will make it possible for anyone with a great idea to turn this idea into production silicon, take it to market quickly with minimum up-front investment, and to have a solution cost compatible with volume production.
Such an advance will benefit everyone, from the world largest OEMs which are facing intense competitive pressures, to the individual entrepreneurs for whom the cost of developing a custom logic solution has become prohibitive.
back to top
