Tabula

Tabula, Inc. operated as a fabless semiconductor company, positioning itself as a challenger in the programmable logic market. Founded in 2003 by Steve Teig, an industry pioneer who previously served as CTO of Cadence Design Systems, the company was headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Teig's background in electronic design automation (EDA) was central to Tabula's ambitious approach to reimagining chip architecture.

The firm's core business was the design and development of what it termed 3-D Programmable Logic Devices (3PLDs), a new category of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Tabula's technology, branded as "Spacetime," was engineered to use time as a third dimension. This was achieved by rapidly reconfiguring the chip's logic, memory, and interconnect fabric at multi-gigahertz rates, allowing the hardware to be reused multiple times per second. This approach aimed to solve the interconnect problem that limited traditional FPGAs, theoretically enabling chips that were denser, faster, and more cost-effective. The company's primary product line was the ABAX family of chips, which targeted compute-intensive applications in the telecommunications, enterprise, and wireless infrastructure markets.

Tabula garnered significant attention, raising over $200 million in venture funding from prominent investors including Greylock Partners, Benchmark Capital, and New Enterprise Associates. A major milestone was securing a partnership with Intel to utilize its advanced 22-nm manufacturing process, a privilege granted to only a handful of companies. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal ranked Tabula third on its annual "Next Big Thing" list. Despite its technological promise and substantial backing, the company faced challenges, reportedly due to the immense complexity of the software required to program its novel architecture. Tabula officially ceased operations on March 24, 2015.

Keywords: fabless semiconductor, 3D programmable logic devices, 3PLD, FPGA, Spacetime architecture, ABAX, Steve Teig, programmable logic, field-programmable gate array, high-performance computing, semiconductor design, Intel foundry, venture capital, electronic design automation, telecom infrastructure, chip architecture, dynamic reconfiguration