SAN JOSE, Calif—January 26, 1998—Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), a leader in programmable logic, with CoreEl MicroSystems, Inc., a Xilinx AllianceCORE partner, announced today the immediate availability of five new cores targeted at networking and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) applications. These new cores, the first ATM-specific cores from Xilinx AllianceCORE program, have been specifically optimized for Xilinx XC4000 FPGAs and the new Spartan series. The core functions include 50 MHz UTOPIA Slave Interface, Cell Delineation, Cell Assembler, and error correction function cores such as CRC10 and CRC32. All are available directly from CoreEl Microsystems. 

"The communications market has been strong for Xilinx for many years," said Rich Sevcik, Xilinx senior vice president software. "CoreEl has significant expertise in this area. These new cores will allow networking customers to design at the system block level as they use our largest devices." 

"Since Xilinx started shipping the XC4000XL/XV devices, networking customers have had the ability to implement complete communications systems in a single FPGA," said Chetan Sanghvi, president and CEO of CoreEl MicroSystems. "These devices have the density and speed required for us to start porting our ASIC Corecell family into FPGAs. Over the next year we will be introducing many more Xilinx FPGA optimized cores." 

Target applications for new cores  

The new Xilinx AllianceCORE products from CoreEl are targeted at ATM communication systems developers including network interface controllers (NICs), switches, traffic shapers, and traffic rate controllers. They provide some fundamental ATM building blocks for developing flexible NIC, segmentation and reassembly (SAR), and transmission convergence circuits. 

Many ATM system designers today are already using Xilinx FPGAs because of the diversity of applications and the dynamic changes that occur in the market. These cores give them ready access to 

building blocks for well defined, standard functions, while providing the ability to uniquely customize a portion of the FPGA for their application. For example, a flexible transmission convergence circuit can be constructed using the UTOPIA Slave, Cell Delineation and Cell Assembler cores, along with a framer and some custom logic. This is useful for ATM test equipment manufacturers to use a single FPGA and reconfigure it with different framers based on the type of system under test. 

The UTOPIA Slave core conforms to the ATM Forum's UTOPIA Level 2 specification and supports 8– and 16–bit operation at 25, 33 and 50 MHz. It includes separate transmit and receive blocks that can be used individually or combined in one FPGA to form a complete UTOPIA transceiver. Both blocks use the Xilinx distributed SelectRAM feature to implement on-chip rate-matching FIFOs. The Cell Delineation and Cell Assembler cores carry out the functions required in the transmit and receive streams of the transmission convergence sub-layer of an ATM physical layer processor. These CRC10 and CRC32 cores each include separate generator and verifier modules that can be used individually or combined. The CRC32 core operates at 30 MHz single clock operation, faster than similar cores from competing PLD providers. 

These products from CoreEl further expand the AllianceCORE portfolio of complete core solutions for users of Xilinx programmable logic. The cores are delivered by CoreEl as Xilinx optimized netlists to guarantee performance in the FPGA. Pricing for the Corecells are: UTOPIA Slave, $18,000; Cell Delineation and Cell Assembler jointly priced at $12,000; CRC10 and CRC32 jointly priced at $7,000. VHDL source code with synthesis scripts is available for additional cost. 

Founded in 1992, CoreEl Microsystems, Inc., is located in Fremont, Calif. CoreEl is a leading Intellectual Property provider for the communications market. Corecells from CoreEl support the ATM, Ethernet, layer 2 and 3 switching, IP over SONET, and telecom transmission application segments. These Corecells include Gigabit MAC, Fast Ethernet MAC, full family of ATM Corecells, a full family of SONET and other transmission Corecells. Many of these Corecells are optimized for Xilinx FPGAs. For more information on CoreEl, access the world wide web at www.coreel.com. 

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

Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC-prefix products, Spartan, and SelectRAM referenced above are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. Other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.  
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