SAN JOSE, Calif., March 15, 1999 – Just one year after the launch of the low-cost Spartan family of FPGAs, Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced that shipments of the devices have exceeded one million units. The Spartan FPGAs are being used more and more by customers as replacements for traditional ASICs in high volume applications. 

"We are extremely pleased with how well the market has accepted the Spartan family," said Kapil Shankar, director of marketing for the Xilinx High Volume FPGA Business Unit. "The Spartan line has established a new benchmark for low-cost FPGAs by offering high performance, low power, on-chip RAM and support for cores at ASIC prices. The Spartan family demonstrates for the first time that FPGAs are a cost-effective alternative to gate arrays for a variety of high-volume applications." 

"Spartan FPGAs provided Spyrus with the flexibility and fast time to market we needed to deploy our latest network encryption technology," said Mark Sutherland, vice president of products and engineering at Spyrus in Santa Clara, Calif., the leading manufacturer of high assurance security products in the world. "Our solution depends on the flexibility of Spartan FPGAs, allowing us to provide our customers with multiple security solutions in a single product. Spartan FPGAs got us to market sooner than we would have using conventional ASIC technology at nearly the same cost."  

Other high volume design wins to date that use the Spartan devices include telecommunications subscriber interfaces, digital modems, low cost network routers and switches, and PC peripherals such as graphics accelerators and MPEG encoders. 

Xilinx took a total cost management approach to designing the Spartan FPGAs, which are available in both 5-volt and 3.3-volt versions. Leading edge process technology provides the smallest possible die sizes; low cost plastic packages reduce assembly costs; and a streamlined feature set, coupled with less expensive hardware test equipment, economizes on overall test and manufacturing overhead costs. As a result, the company has been able to offer 5,000-gate Spartan FPGAs for less than $3. High volume pricing for the largest Spartan devices, which offer densities up to 40,000 gates, will be less than $10 by mid-1999. 

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 commands more than half of the world market 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.