Tabula Inc., a privately held fabless semiconductor company and developer of the ABAX family of 3D Programmable Logic Devices (3PLDs), has announced that it’s raised the biggest amount in the decade by any chip company (as the company claims!). The company has raised a whopping $108 million in series D funding from the Crosslink Capital and DAG Ventures. Along with these, the existing investors of the company; Balderton Capital, Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Integral Capital, and NEA also participated in the funding round. According to Tabula, it will use the funding to Support Rapid Customer Adoption of the Industry’s First 3D Programmable Logic Devices.

“This funding represents a resounding validation of our breakthrough Spacetime 3D programmable logic technology and a vote of confidence for the Tabula team in its ability to bring about both technological innovation as well as business innovation to customers. We will continue to build on our customer momentum by increasing volume shipments of our ABAX 3PLD product family. With the disruption our Spacetime architecture is bringing to the market, we will take programmable devices where they have never gone before and intend on becoming a global semiconductor market leader,” said Dennis Segers, CEO of Tabula.

After the completion of the series D round, the total amount becomes $214 million. Tabula informed that the reason behind their ability to raise such a great amount is that programmable logic device is becoming is a big thing and is the most profitable segment of semiconductor market. It is confident enough to take away market share from ASIC suppliers such as IBM and NEC and ASSP suppliers like Broadcom and Marvell too.

The best part is that in addition to the company itself, its investors are also optimistic as we heard this from Gary Hromadko, Venture Partner of Crosslink Capital,

“Tabula’s Spacetime technology addresses the problems at the heart of the programmable logic market today by delivering unprecedented capabilities at unmatched cost points compared to FPGAs. Tabula represents the largest market opportunity of any private semiconductor company in the industry today. This new infusion of capital will allow Tabula to aggressively execute on their customer adoption and product development plans.”

Besides this development, Tabula also announced Cisco as its new customer, which is a really important relationship for the chip maker. While the type of chips it will be making for Cisco is still not confirmed, its has become a serious chance for the company to show its potential and justify its large funding amount.

Tabula faces a competitive scene in the chip industry, as Intel recently disclosed its plans to launch a less than 10-watt version of its Atom processor in 2012, as well as a sub-15-watt Xeon powered by the Sandy Bridge architecture. The same will be arriving later this year. Additionally, Intel’s Xeon Sandy Bridge server platforms will also be launched within a few weeks.

ARM is also experiencing great growth as it is now expanding its realm from phones to supercomputers. ARM architecture is slowly building from a foundation of low power consumption and low cost to overtake x86—and it looks like they are drawing slowly into the HPC market. The company has achieved the status of “Hot Item” these days as it has made a lot of achievements since its inception. Some of the major developments include its licensing agreement with Microsoft and chances of Windows coming to ARM, hence giving Intel a tough ride.