SAN JOSE, Calif., January 12, 1998 -- Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ:XLNX), the world leader in CMOS programmable logic devices, today announced the availability of a full suite of intellectual property (IP) cores that supports the new Spartan series of low cost FPGAs. The cores are available today from both Xilinx and its AllianceCORE partners and include universal asynchronous receivers/transceivers (UARTs), microprocessor peripherals, Reed-Solomon and Viterbi codecs, and RISC processors. 

"This is the first time a complete set of cores has been introduced simultaneously with a new family of programmable logic," said Rich Sevcik, Xilinx senior vice president of software. "Customers can immediately leverage the time-to-market value of cores with the industry's lowest cost line of FPGA products, providing them with a complete solution." 

Spartan opens new high volume, price sensitive consumer applications for programmable logic ranging from personal computers, cable modems, set-top boxes, and video games to CD players and PC peripherals such as graphics and network add-in cards. In high-volume applications, Spartan pricing reaches as low as half a cent per logic cell or more than 40 gates per penny. Thus, implementing an 8 x 8 multiplier LogiCORE product, which consumes 129 logic cells in an XCS30XL device, would cost $0.65 out of the total device cost of $6.95. Likewise the table demonstrates further examples of silicon implementation costs. 
 

"When Xilinx showed us the Spartan series, we immediately saw that it provided the perfect combination of features, performance, and price," said Dasaradha Gude, CEO of Virtual IP Group, a Sunnyvale, Calif., AllianceCORE partner that currently offers Intel-compatible microprocessor peripheral and UART cores for Xilinx devices. "Customers no longer need to worry about the cost of the FPGA when they purchase IP from us. It made perfect sense for us to port our cores to the Spartan series." 

"Processors have always been too expensive when implemented in FPGAs," said Terence Lo, vice president of T7L Technology, an AllianceCORE partner based in North York, Ont., Canada. T7L offers a number of RISC processor cores for Spartan devices. "With the Spartan series, we can provide very high performance at price points that are competitive with standard devices. This will immediately expand the market for our cores." 

"The Spartan series breaks new ground in FPGA price performance," said Tim Smith, director of Memec Design Services, Mesa, Ariz., which offers microprocessor peripheral cores through the AllianceCORE program. "Since our FPGA cores are so efficient to start with, customers can now get custom, programmable silicon solutions at standard product prices." 

The Spartan series leverages all of the core-friendly features of the XC4000 series, including segmented routing and distributed SelectRAM. This makes it possible to design cores more efficiently and with more predictable performance while consuming less power than non-segmented, or continuous interconnect architectures. 

"The performance and efficiency we achieve with our DSP cores would not be possible without the segmented routing and distributed RAM of the Xilinx architecture," said James Doherty, managing director of Integrated Silicon Systems, Ltd., of Belfast, Northern Ireland, which markets Reed-Solomon codecs and other DSP functions through the AllianceCORE program. "The combination of the Xilinx feature set and the Xilinx development software is allowing us to get performance that we never thought possible with programmable logic. And with the Spartan series, customers don't have to pay a silicon premium to get this." 

All of the Xilinx DSP LogiCORE products support Spartan devices today. The Xilinx LogiCORE PCI interface, the industry's most successful PCI core, is expected to be available before the end of this quarter. Additional cores for the Spartan series and all Xilinx devices will be added as the Xilinx CORE Solutions product portfolio grows. 

Founded in 1984, Xilinx is the world’s largest supplier of programmable logic solutions comprising 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, peripherals, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, consumer and high reliability/military markets. For more information on Xilinx, access the World Wide Web site at www.xilinx.com. 

Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC-prefix product designations, Spartan, AllianceCORE, LogiCORE, and SelectRAM are trademarks of Xilinx. Other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 
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