The FPGA: 40 Years of Change

Join us for The FPGA: 40 Years of Change, an event on Tue, March 10, 2026 at 7-9pm at Covalent Metrology, 925 Thompson Place, Sunnyvale, CA 94085.

We'll have free quality pizza and drinks starting at 6:30pm. Come early and network with our members, other engineers, interested parties, and possible consulting clients.

A Zoom option for this hybrid event is at https://californiaconsultants.org/event/the-fpga-40-years-of-change/

NOTE: As in-person registration closes at Noon on Monday, March 9, only the Zoom option is available after that.

Description: In 1984, the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) was invented at Silicon Valley startup Xilinx by its co-founder Ross Freeman. It was not an obviously good technology as it had serious drawbacks in speed, cost, power, and capacity. However, its novel design transformed the technology industry as it rode the wave of Moore’s Law. As this transformation was not a straight road, companies that did not recognize fundamental industry changes created by the FPGA fell by the wayside. If companies did not stretch to find new uses for this technology, or did not deploy its resources in building a new ecosystem, they also failed.

Xilinx’s FPGA invention led to the major industry transformation of the Fabless semiconductor model, and step-by-step Xilinx navigated this field of potential failure. These steps tell of a company growing from a hyper-lean adrenaline-driven startup to a multi-billion-dollar success story. Not every step was correct, and certainly there was some luck. However, considerable effort was required to achieve that luck, and even more effort to capitalize on it.

In this talk, IEEE Fellow Steve Trimberger will discuss change: the changing value of semiconductor scaling, the changing needs of EDA, the changing barriers to entry, the changing application of the technology, and the changing role of consultants and corporate relationships over the course of many years. These changes got us to 2026 – what change is next?

Please note that an IEEE Milestone for the FPGA will be dedicated on Thu, March 12. Information about attending its dedication online will be available soon.

Bio: Dr. Steve Trimberger worked at Xilinx from 1988-2017 where he headed the Circuits and Architectures Group in Xilinx Research Labs. He designed the bitstream security system for the Xilinx Virtex-II, which became the basis for FPGA security in the industry. Steve was also instrumental in bringing 3D packaging from a lab curiosity to a product in the mid-2000s, a technique deployed by Xilinx as Stacked Silicon Interconnect Technology (SSIT). He led the Xilinx Advanced Development group for many years, and was a Xilinx Fellow. After his retirement from Xilinx, he served as a program manager of the microsystems technology office at DARPA.

Steve is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to circuits, architectures, and software technology for FPGAs, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to solid-state electronics. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and is on the National Space Society Board of Governors. Steve has written 3 books on CAD for integrated circuits and FPGAs, and dozens of papers on design automation and FPGA architectures. He holds over 250 US patents, and is a 4-time winner of the Ross Freeman Award. Freeman co-founded Xilinx in 1984, and was the sole inventor of the FPGA.

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