SAN JOSE, Calif., December 15, 1997 -- Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ:XLNX), the world leader in programmable logic, announced today the availability of its next generation of Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) LogiCORE product, v2.0 and a new Xilinx FPGA family optimized for PCI, the XC4000XLT family. This new version of a 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI interface eliminates the performance barriers seen in other PCI solutions. It enables designers to build a fully compliant PCI system with maximum sustained bandwidth, up to the theoretical limit maximum of 132 Mbytes per second. This allows designers of fully compliant PCI add-in boards to benefit from time-to-market advantages of FPGAs. 

A new –09 speed-grade is available for the standard XC4000XL devices as well as the XC4000XLT devices. The new speed-grade, 15 percent faster than the previous speed leader, the XC4000XL-1 device, enables improved performance of the new LogiCORE PCI version in the high-density devices. 

"Fast development time and compliance to the 2.1 PCI specification are important," said Mike Carboni, technical marketing manger of Intel's Embedded Microcomputer Division. An Intel proof-of-concept design incorporating the Xilinx LogiCORE PCI interface development kit is available as an application note at http://developer.intel.com/design/index.htm. 

Key to high performance is sustaining bandwidth 

"When designing a high-performance PCI system, it is important to realize the difference between peak bandwidth and sustained bandwidth," said Roman Iwanczuk, director of the Xilinx CORE Solutions Business Unit. "Competing offerings often specify peak bandwidth that is limited to smaller blocks of data and does not reflect the overall bandwidth that can be achieved in the user’s systems." 

The Xilinx LogiCORE PCI core achieves high performance by supporting fully compliant zero wait-state burst operations and by giving the designer full flexibility to design a high-performance back-end. By employing the unique Xilinx SelectRAM feature, designers can configure one or more scaleable high-speed FIFOs with simultaneous read and write. The result is the fastest PCI interface in the industry without any performance limitations. 

"With Xilinx PCI LogiCORE product, we were able to achieve a sustained bandwidth of 124 Mbytes per second in our EDOX Document Server," said Tony Clark, principal design engineer at Management Graphics, Inc. "The high performance of the LogiCORE solution combined with the short time-to-market and flexibility of a programmable FPGA solution, made Xilinx the obvious choice." 

CompactPCI is an attractive alternative to VME, the current bus standard for the communications industry and, a ccording to Electronic Trend Publications in their 1997 PCI market survey, is expected to grow explosively to hit almost one billion dollars within four years.. 

New Xilinx XC4000XLT devices optimized for PCI 

The new XC4000XLT family, based on the industry’s fastest 3.3V FPGA family, the XC4000XL family, is optimized for PCI and supports fully 3.3V PCI-compliant designs. The XC4062XLT device offers the highest capacity PCI interface with up to 124,000 system-gates remaining for the users' own designs, twice as many as competing offerings. The new family features the positive input signal clamping function required by the PCI specifications for 3.3V. In a PCI system, the clamping diode pins are tied to the 3.3V or 5V power rail of the PCI bus. 

The new HardWire FpgASIC family supports the LogiCORE PCI v2.0 solution. The flexibility of an FPGA is especially important when designing PCI add-in boards where full compliance can be verified with several vendors' PCs before the design is convered to a HardWire version. 

Pricing and Availability 

The LogiCORE PCI 2.0 module is available as a Master (initiator and target) and Slave (target only). The core can be configured and downloaded from the PCI core generator on the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com/products/logicore/logicorepci/pci_sol.htm. The price for LogiCORE PCI Master is $8,995 and LogiCORE PCI Slave is $4,995. Alternatively, users can request a compact disc with design files. 

All devices are available starting at $153 for the XC4013XL in 100-piece quantities with HardWire prices starting at under $15 for 50,000-piece quantities. The price of the new "-09" speed-grade versions for all the XC40000X series start at $51.45 in 100-piece quantities. 

Founded in 1984, Xilinx is the world’s largest supplier of programmable logic solutions producing industry-leading device architectures and world class design software. Headquarted in San Jose, Calif., the company pioneered the market for field programmable gate array (FPGA) semiconductor devices the provide high integration and quick time-to-market for electronic equipment manufacturers in the computer, peripheral telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information on Xilinx, access www.xilinx.com. 

Note to editors: Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC-prefix product designations, SelectRAM, and LogiCORE are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. All other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 
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