SAN JOSE, Calif., February 14, 2000—Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced that cumulative revenue from its new Virtex^TM series of FPGAs, which went into full production about a year ago, has exceeded $100 million. 

The XilinxÒ Virtex devices fundamentally redefined programmable logic by expanding the traditional capabilities of FPGAs to include a powerful set of features that address board level system integration problems for high performance designs. The Virtex series was also the industry’s first line of FPGAs to offer one million system gates. The latest Virtex-E devices, unveiled in September 1999, increase device density beyond three million system gates.

"The market acceptance of Virtex FPGAs is unparalleled in the history of the programmable logic industry," said Xilinx CEO Wim Roelandts. "No other product has ever ramped as fast, and most of the Virtex revenue to date has been for customer prototyping. We expect to see Virtex revenue increase substantially when a wide range of customer prototype designs go into production over the next several quarters. Additionally, demand for our recently announced Virtex-E family is ramping at twice the rate of the original Virtex family."

The Virtex FPGAs have numerous built-in features to handle board level system integration. Those include broad capability for chip-to-chip communications through 20 programmable single-ended and differential I/O standards, digital delay lock loops for system clock management, and a hierarchy of high performance memory resources and interfaces.

With Virtex FPGAs, digital designers for the first time can use the devices to perform not only familiar logic functions, but also tasks that were formerly handled at the board level by separate, dedicated parts. Virtex FPGAs eliminate the need for components such as phase lock loops, voltage translation buffers, and memory when on-chip RAM is sufficient. This high level of integration allows designers to increase system performance, reduce overall system power requirements, cut costs, and save board space. 

The Virtex-E series provides the foundation for a scalable platform of FPGAs that are produced using a leading-edge 0.18-micron, six-layer metal process. Virtex-E FPGAs operate at system frequencies of over 311 MHz. Densities for the new Virtex-E family range from the XCV50E^TM device, with 50,000 system gates at the low end, to the high-end XCV3200E^TM device, the first three million gate FPGA to come to market.

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.