SAN JOSE, Calif., February 26, 2001—Amphion Semiconductor, Ltd. and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) announced today four new high-channel-count ADPCM cores for the digital communication market. Optimized and verified for Xilinx Virtex™ FPGAs, the new cores are now available from Amphion through the Xilinx AllianceCORE™ program. The cores will be discussed, along with other technical system and DSP design topics, at the Xilinx Virtex-II and XtremeDSP™ seminars that will be held in Europe starting February 27, 2001. In addition, Professor John McCanny, CTO and founder of Amphion and the international authority in the field of VLSI for signal processing, will speak at the seminars in Swindon, Cambridge, and Paris to discuss using FPGAs for high-performance DSP applications. For complete schedule and registration information, view the Xilinx website at www.xilinx.com.

“The broadband and wireless revolutions are driving the need for a new DSP solution with higher performance and greater flexibility," said Professor McCanny.  “The new Virtex-II FPGA from Xilinx, combined with IP from Amphion, allow designers to meet this new demand.”

The new AllianceCORE products include ADPCM voice codec cores supporting 256, 512, 768 and 1024 simplex channels (or 128, 348, 256 or 512 duplex channels) which are compliant with the G.721, G.723, G.726, G.726a, G.727, and G.727a ITU standards. The cores feature online configuration of each channel for different compression rates, provide µ-law and A-law for each encoding/decoding channel and can work in both burst and continuous modes. With these new cores, customers can reduce risk and development time when designing communication systems such as Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), video conferencing, voice mail systems, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

The full-day seminars have been segmented into two parts to target hardware and system designers in the morning and DSP designers and system architects in the afternoon. The morning sessions will focus on such topics as system design solutions and methodologies, and a roadmap for Virtex-II Platform FPGAs. The afternoon sessions will discuss topics like design solutions and methodologies for high-performance DSP in FPGAs, as well as using FPGAs in digital communication and video/imaging systems.

“Xilinx created the XtremeDSP initiative to address the increasing need for flexible, high-performance DSP solutions. The market reception has been phenomenal, " said Babak Hedayati, director of marketing and business development of the IP solutions division at Xilinx. “An important component of the initiative is to work with partners such as Amphion, to ensure that customers always have access to industry leading IP and expertise.”

License and availability
The new cores are approved by Xilinx as AllianceCORE products and are available now for purchase from Amphion. Contact information and datasheets are available on the Xilinx IP-Center at www.xilinx.com/ipcenter. 

About Amphion
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific virtual components (ASVCs) for multimedia and communications System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuits.  Amphion delivers video/image compression, speech/voice coding, and channel coding solutions for consumer and communications applications.  Using proprietary techniques for direct-mapped implementations of digital signal processing functions and algorithms in hardware, Amphion develops and licenses IP cores that realize 10X to 1000X improvements in performance compared to conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP processors.  Amphion is a privately held company with corporate headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing operations in San Jose, California.  For more information, visit the Amphion web site at http://www.Amphion.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.