SAN JOSE, Calif., August 30, 1999—Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced a joint technology development and OEM agreement with Integrated Silicon Systems, Ltd. (ISS) of Belfast, Northern Ireland, for Xilinx to provide versions of the popular ISS Reed-Solomon cores. The products will use Xilinx Smart-IP technology, which permits customers to set their own core parameters. Reed-Solomon is a digital data error detection and correction technology that is widely used in communications, wireless and mass-storage systems. 

"This agreement is a natural extension of our long-term and successful relationship with Xilinx and the growth of ISS as a leading IP provider," said James G. Doherty, CEO of ISS. "Through Xilinx we can reach the broad base of FPGA users worldwide, and with the Smart-IP technology, this new solution addresses a wide variety of user customization requirements. That allows ISS to continue to work with our partners to develop complex, market-focused application specific virtual components (ASVCs) for next generations systems." 

Under the terms of the agreement, engineers from Xilinx in Edinburgh, Scotland, and ISS in Belfast will jointly develop high performance, predictable and parameterizable Reed-Solomon encoder and decoder cores for use in the Xilinx Virtex, Spartan, and XC4000 families of FPGAs. Xilinx will then deliver and support these LogiCOREs. 

Smart-IP Technology Key for Mass Market Cores

The unique Smart-IP design methodology uses embedded, relational placement constraint capabilities of the Xilinx development software tools that leverage the distributed RAM and segmented routing of Xilinx FPGAs. Cores the use Smart-IP technology are user-configurable and deliver a predictable, high-performance and highly optimized solution that is unaffected by device density or surrounding logic. Smart-IP technology is used in all Xilinx LogiCORE products, including the LogiCORE PCI interface, the programmable logic industry's most successful PCI core. 

"ISS has set a standard for communications and multimedia core solutions that has been well accepted by the FPGA market for some time," said Babak Hedayati, Program Director for Core Solutions marketing at Xilinx. "We saw that is was time to address the increasing demand by our customer base for Reed-Solomon cores with a cost-effective, easy to use LogiCORE solution. Partnering with ISS ensures quality cores with a brand name that FPGA customers have come to trust." 

A representative configuration of the Reed-Solomon decoder uses 58 percent of the logic resources of a 20,000 system gate SpartanXL , making the effective silicon implementation cost $3.36, based on 100,000 unit quantities at the end of 2000. 

Beta versions of the LogiCORE Reed-Solomon cores are in use by customers today. The production versions will be fully released for Virtex, Spartan and the XC4000 FPGAs early next year. 

About ISS

Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd. (ISS) is a leading supplier of application-specific virtual components (ASVCs) for multimedia and communications System-on-a-Chip (SOC) integrated circuits. Using proprietary techniques for direct-mapped implementations of digital signal processing functions and algorithms in hardware, ISS delivers solutions for wireless and wired communications, digital video, and digital imaging applications that realize 10X to 1000X improvements in performance compared to conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP microprocessors. 

ISS is a privately held company with European headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and worldwide sales and marketing operations (ISS Technologies, Inc.) in San Jose, California. More information about ISS and its products may be obtained from the Internet at http://www.iss-dsp.com. 

About Xilinx

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.