Q1: What is being announced by IBM and Xilinx?

A1: An agreement between IBM and Xilinx that represents a new model for building chips and a new supplier (business) model for customers. It brings together the complementary strengths of  both companies to help customers achieve greater flexibility, improved time-to-market and reduced cost for chip designs across a range of applications, particularly in communications.

Q2: What are the advantages to customers?

A2: Customers will have greater flexibility in selecting the type of chip solution -- standard products, FPGAs or ASICs -- that best meets the needs of a given application. They will have the capability to transition between products more quickly and cost-effectively as a result of this agreement between IBM and Xilinx.

Q3: What are the advantages to each company?

A3: Xilinx: IBM’s PowerPC and CoreConnect technologies will enable Xilinx to effectively integrate high-performance processing solutions within their FPGAs without incurring the delays and engineering costs of developing new processor cores. The broad acceptance of the PowerPC architecture ensures a wide-range of software, IP and design methodologies are available for supporting embedded FPGA solutions. The agreement allows Xilinx the capability to map products to IBM’s leadership process technologies and to provide customers with a smooth transition to IBM’s ASIC solutions as needed.

IBM: This agreement is further validation of the strength of IBM’s PowerPC architecture, CoreConnect bus and leadership process technologies in the marketplace. The agreement will enable customers who choose FPGA solutions from Xilinx to more easily migrate to IBM ASIC and standard product solutions as appropriate. Customers will factor performance, cost, time-to-market and volume requirements in making a determination as to the best option for a given application.. IBM will be associated with the leader in FPGAs and will have the use of this capability as an additional means of forwarding leadership process technologies (along with the use of IBM’s other capabilities for this purpose). IBM will have the opportunity to manufacture FPGA’s for Xilinx.

Q4: What makes this announcement unique?

A4: This agreement is unique in the semiconductor industry because it brings together the worldwide leaders in ASICs  and FPGAs. It will lead to the development of FPGA products that will incorporate the CoreConnect bus technology and PowerPC core from IBM with FPGA technology from Xilinx in devices to be fabricated with IBM’s advanced manufacturing process. This will enable customers to use the same bus and processor architectures for applications requiring either ASIC, standard product, or FPGAs to meet their unique time-to-market, cost, and design flexibility needs. In addition, the solutions from both companies benefit from being manufactured in IBM’s industry leading process technology.

Q5: What is the duration of this agreement?

A5: This is a multi-year agreement.. 

Q6: Are any financials of  this agreement being disclosed?

A6: No.

Q7: How long have IBM and Xilinx been in discussions about this agreement?

A7: The discussions have been ongoing for an extended period of time.

Q8: Is there an existing relationship between IBM and Xilinx?

A8: Yes.  IBM has fabricated sample FPGAs in 7SF (copper). 

Q9: What strengths does each company bring to the agreement?

A9: Xilinx, the inventor of the FPGA, brings its expertise and experience designing, building, testing, debugging and delivering some of the largest devices in the semiconductor industry.  Xilinx also brings FPGA structures and test designs which enable quick fabrication process yield diagnostic analysis.  Xilinx delivers the industry's most popular advanced FPGA architecture, Virtex, which enables customers to quickly bring their systems to market.  Additionally, the Virtex architectures can be reprogrammed after deployment in the field; thus, enabling customers to upgrade systems whenever required. 

 IBM, the owner of the PowerPC architecture, brings its industry leadership in process technology, high performance PowerPC cores, CoreConnect bus, worldwide leadership in ASICs and expertise in system-on-chip development. 

Q10: How many people from each companies' engineering divisions will work exclusively on this delivery?

A10: Due to competitive confidentiality, IBM and Xilinx do not disclose the allocation of their development resources.

Q11: Which PowerPC core will be embedded?

A11: Xilinx will announce the exact processor cores and other related IP during the appropriate product announcements. Access to an excellent processor roadmap is critical to providing the best possible embedded FPGA solution.

Q12: How will the delivery of an embedded processor in an FPGA change the way systems are designed today?

A12: Embedding the PowerPC processor core in an FPGA gives customers the performance advantages of a hard core that is tightly coupled, via the high bandwidth CoreConnect on-chip bus, directly to the FPGA array. This can  increase the overall performance of a processor/FPGA solution. The use of the CoreConnect on chip bus also enables a customer to first prototype their design using a PowerPC based FPGA device and then easily migrate the design to a PowerPC-based ASIC when their volume and cost requirements demand.

Q13: What is the market share of the PowerPC?

A13: PowerPC is rapidly becoming a standard in networking and communications applications.  According to figures from Dataquest and MicroDesign Resources, IBM PowerPC is experiencing rapid acceptance in the marketplace, with over an 80% unit and revenue increase from 1998-1999 in embedded applications.

Q14: What is the CoreConnect Technology?

A14: The CoreConnect bus architecture is an on-chip bus which enables communication among reusable IP in a system-on-a-chip design, in an analogous fashion to the standard ISA bus for chip-to-chip communication in a PC. CoreConnect has been in use by IBM for about 5 years and IBM has a rapidly expanding set of reusable IP available for integration into SOC designs. IBM is also licensing the open architecture bus IP for free, without royalty, to the marketplace. There are currently nearly three dozen licensees of the bus architecture in about a year of licensing and it is quickly becoming the industry standard.

Q15: What is the FPGA market share for Xilinx? 

Xilinx has over 90% market share for advanced architecture FPGAs, which include the Virtex and Virtex-E families, based on publicly disclosed revenue numbers.  The advanced architecture FPGAs are those that integrate system level features such as a wide range of input/output standards, clock generation circuitry, block memory and very high logic gate counts.  Xilinx leads the overall FPGA market with 57% market share for calendar year 1999, as reported by Cahners In-Stat Group.

Q16: How does IBM benefit from using FPGAs early in the process?

A16: FPGAs are an excellent vehicle in debugging process technology.  Xilinx technology compliments IBM’s other products as a process technology driver.

Q17: Why has Xilinx chosen to integrate a processor core into an FPGA?

A17: Xilinx chose to embed IBM’s PowerPC processors because it would enable Xilinx to offer a very high performance processor solution that is a leader in key market segments Xilinx believes this will offer the market a significant time-to-market advantage for high-performance embedded processor solutions. By offering one architecture across FPGA, standard product and ASIC based solutions, customers can choose the solution that is right for them without having to worry about changing processor architectures. 

Q18: Which FPGA architecture will be targeted? 

A18: The Virtex-II architecture will be the basis for our processor integration strategy. Virtex-II is Xilinx second generation Virtex architecture and has been designed to effectively manage the high routing requirements for embedding functions within the array (Once again, this announcement is not intended to disclose the product family at this time.)

Q19: What software will support the delivery? 

A19: Xilinx will announce its complete software solutions for the embedded functions at a later date. The base Virtex-II architecture is currently supported in Xilinx 3.1i software on a limited access basis. The 3.1i design environment is supported by leading EDA and synthesis vendors, including Cadence Design, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Synplicity and Exemplar Logic. IBM’s embedded PowerPC processors are supported by over 80 development tools vendors worldwide. 

Q20: What kind of performance benefits are realized by embedding the processor?

A20: IBM embedded PowerPC processor cores provide leadership performance and are the most highly optimized embedded cores in the industry (offer the highest performance per given silicon area).  Additionally, IBM’s CoreConnect bus architecture promotes the use of reusable IP, enables high performance on-chip communication and is ideal for FPGA and ASIC architectures.  High system performance requires both a high performance processor and interconnect technologies.

Q21: How much of the FPGA capacity will accommodate the processor?

A21: This is not a product announcement, so we cannot answer this question completely at this time.  However, the PowerPC processor core will be embedded as a ‘hard’ solution, meaning the processor will be fabricated in the identical method and process technology as would be employed by IBM. By not being programmed into the FPGA array it leaves more room for customers to include their own logic into the FPGA array. 

Q22: How will this agreement affect the Xilinx manufacturing strategy?

A22: Xilinx will benefit because its FPGA products can be manufactured in processes based on the previously announced process technology agreement between IBM and Xilinx major foundry partner UMC.  This builds a strong foundation for continued technology leadership within the FPGA market, expands manufacturing capacity and provides further geographic diversity.

Q23: When will the first product ship with the embedded processor?  How many FPGAs will include the PowerPC?

A23: Xilinx will announce product details at a later date.