Ann Duft
Xilinx, Inc.
(408) 879-4726
ann.duft@xilinx.com

 Frankie Borison
Oak Ridge Public Relations
(408) 253-5042
frankie@oakridge.com

For Immediate Release

 SAN JOSE, Calif., April 21, 1997—Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced it is now shipping the industry’s fastest 5V FPGA device, the XC4000E-1. The industry’s most successful FPGA family by revenue, with over seven million units shipped to date, is now the fastest. The XC4000E family now reaches beyond 80 MHz system performance.

"We performed extensive comparisons with comparable 5V FPGAs from other vendors and found that the XC4000E-1 device was faster by 5 to 20 percent in every end-user application," said Kapil Shankar, director of marketing. "This FPGA family provides the industry's highest performance 5V programmable logic solution for engineers designing in key emerging applications such as networking, multimedia, and data processing."

For the first time, high-performance gate array designers can now employ FPGAs in their systems, Shankar added.

New process optimization improvements made to the XC4000E devices deliver up to 25 percent performance improvement over the -2 speedgrade—previously the fastest devices in the XC4000E family. Additionally, the performance gain establishes the -1 speedgrade as the fastest 5V FPGA in the industry.

The XC4000E-1 device also extends the power of Xilinx's PCI design solution. In 1996, the XC4000E-2 speedgrade and the Xilinx-verified PCI LogiCORE constituted the first PCI solution in the programmable logic industry, delivering true PCI-compliance for target and initiator applications. The new -1 performance improvement extends full PCI-compliance to 20,000-gate densities and increases the overall design flexibility for PCI designs.

The performance leadership of the XC4000E family complements its highly-integrated feature set, including Select-RAM memory. Select-RAM memory can be configured as single-port or dual-port RAM. Because Select-RAM’s dual-port is a true, simultaneous read-write implementation, it delivers performance up to 125 MHz. High-speed dual-port memories are vital in constructing high-performance FIFO memories frequently used in networking and data communications applications.

The XC4000E series spans 237 to 2,432 logic cells (2,000 to 25,000 logic gates). The family is available in PLCC, BGA, and PGA packages, as well as the thin quad flat packs for small form factor requirements such as PQFP, HQFP, VQFP, and TQFP packages.

Xilinx Software Support

The Xilinx Foundation and Alliance series support the new XC4000E-1 speedgrades. The Foundation series is a fully-integrated, ready-to-use, Windows-based solution supporting industry-standard Hardware Description Languages (HDLs), synthesis, schematic entry, gate-level simulation, and the Xilinx XACTstep implementation tools. Users can shorten design cycles and the associated learning curves with these HDLs. The Xilinx Alliance series leverages the industry’s most popular third-party EDA tools and provides open-system benefits with support for industry-standard design methodologies and interfaces, including EDIF, VHDL (VITAL 95), and Verilog/SDF. Thus, users create and verify designs in their chosen software environment.

Pricing and Availability

The new speedgrade versions of the XC4000E family are available now. 100-piece pricing for the XC4003E–1 (PC84 package) begins at $49 and HardWire mask-programmed devices begin at $4.50.

Founded in 1984, Xilinx is the world’s largest 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 electronics, and high-reliability/military markets. For more information on Xilinx, Inc., access the World Wide Web site at http://www.xilinx.com.

 Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC-prefix products, Select-RAM, HardWire, XACTstep, and Foundation referenced above are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. Other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

 #9715