Tabula’s Spacetime™ technology enables a new category of programmable logic device - 3PLD - that is freed from the limitations of FPGA’s 2D topologies by using time as a third dimension to create a 3D device.

This is made possible by a Spacetime hardware capable of dynamically reconfiguring at multi-GHz rates and by the Stylus compiler that transparently manages this ultra-rapid reconfiguration of logic, memory, and interconnect resources throughout the chip. As a result, Spacetime creates a third dimension of Space by using Time.

A Spacetime device reconfigures on the fly at multi-GHz rates executing each portion of a design in an automatically defined sequence of steps. Manufactured using a standard CMOS process, Spacetime uses this ultra-rapid reconfiguration to make Time a third dimension. This results in a 3D device with multiple layers or “folds” in which computation and signal transmission can occur. Each fold performs a portion of the desired function and stores the result in place. When some or all of a fold is reconfigured, it uses the locally stored data to perform the next portion of the function. By rapidly reconfiguring to execute different portions of each function, a 3D Spacetime device can implement a complex design using only a small fraction of the resources that would be required by an FPGA, with its inherently 2D architecture.

This ultra-rapid reconfiguration enables Spacetime to deliver a breakthrough in programmable logic price/performance and capabilities. As a result, Spacetime products combine the flexibility and rapid time-to-market of an FPGA with ASIC capacity, at price points suitable for volume production.