August 16, 2004
Industry and Product News - The SOC Explorer -
Xilinx Selects Agilent Technologies 93000 SOC Series Tester for Characterization of Ultra-High-Speed Devices.

August 13, 2004
Xilinx, Inc. recently announced a $330,000 donation to the Fudan University School of Microelectronics - EDA Confidential -
Xilinx, Inc. recently announced a $330,000 donation to the Fudan University School of Microelectronics. The company says, "A full complement of the Xilinx programmable logic solutions - including design software, silicon and reference boards - will be incorporated into course curriculum and workshops focused on advanced digital electronic design. The Xilinx University Program (XUP) donation will be used to equip a new Fudan-Xilinx lab with more than 50 workstations. The XUP contribution
includes multiple seats of logic and embedded design software. Xilinx is also donating multi-media boards and demonstration boards equipped with Spartan II
FPGA devices and CoolRunner II CPLDs."

August 5, 2004
Heat wave: FPGAs confront increasing, evolving power consumption - EDN -
Historically, those of you who include programmable-logic devices in your system designs probably focused your power-consumption prediction and reduction efforts on dynamic, or "active," power draw. This emphasis existed for good reason: Until recently, dynamic power consumption dominated the total power profile of a chip, and it was a factor you could influence through your design decisions. Static power consumption was primarily an issue with CPLDs' sense amplifiers, whose power-versus-performance behavior you often could also control. EDN's coverage of programmable-logic power consumption, whose recommended design techniques remain valid, appropriately focused on these topics. Xilinx's Virtex-4 chips mentioned

August 5, 2004
31st Annual Microprocessor Directory Field Guide - EDN -
Welcome to the 31st annual EDN Microprocessor/Microcontroller Directory. The number of companies and devices the directory lists continues to grow and change. The size of this year's table of devices has grown more than 25% from last year's. Also, despite the fact that a number of companies have disappeared from the list, the number of companies participating in this year's directory has still grown by 10%. So what? Should this growth and change in the companies and devices the directory lists mean anything to you? Xilinx offers the Virtex-II Pro family of FPGAs with an immersed (hard) PowerPC 32-bit RISC core. Xilinx also offers the soft MicroBlaze core, which is a configurable, general-purpose, 32-bit RISC core that you can use with Spartan and Virtex-II FPGAs. You can use the 8-bit PicoBlaze microcontroller core with Spartan and Virtex-II series FPGAs, as well as with the CoolRunner family of CPLDs for cost-sensitive applications.

August 5, 2004
FPGAs pack a cost-conscious counterpunch - EDN -
Xilinx's latest economy-minded FPGAs, the 90-nm-based Spartan-3 devices, are more than a year beyond their public unveiling and belatedly ramping into production, judging from the diminishing number of lack-of-availability complaints on Usenet newsgroup comp.arch.fpga and other industry forums (see “FPGA finesses a photolithography flip-flop,” EDN, April 17, 2003). Right on schedule, competitive responses from Altera and Lattice have hit the scene. Altera’s Cyclone II is the more evolutionary and, therefore, predictable of the two contenders. The company will begin by converting the lithography of its 0.13 micron-based Cyclone product line to a 90-nm process, akin to Xilinx’s shrinkage of Virtex-II to come up with Spartan-3

August 4, 2004
Chip firms bank on mobile and automotive - Electronics Weekly -
Concerns that the semiconductor market may stop growing this year are being played down with suppliers banking on new levels of demand from the mobile and automotive sectors. “Inevitably the market will flatten, it's just a question of when but we don't think it will be in the second half of this year,” said Alan Matthews, European marketing director at Xilinx.

August 4, 2004
Fab expansion - Silicon Strategies -
Expansion at wafer fabs around the world is continuing apace, dspite the near-certainty that at some-point this will tip the chip market into oversupply. South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said Friday (July 23) it has broken ground on the second stage of its new and expanded wafer fab in Austin, Texas. Meanwhile Xilinx Inc., a vendor of hardware programmable chips, has invested more than US$10 million in Hejian Technology Co. Ltd. based in the city of Suzhou, in China, according to a Reuters report that cited Wim Roelandts, Xilinx chairman, president and chief executive
officer, as its source.

July 26, 2004
Power designs ease use of Xilinx FPGAs - Electronic Products & Technology -
An easy-to-use design guide that addresses the power management requirements of the most popular field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) from Xilinx Inc., San Jose CA, including Virtex and Spartan families, has been developed by National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara CA.

July 23, 2004
Tech Ticker: Xilinx profit doubles as sales jump 35% - San Jose Mercury News -
Xilinx, the world's biggest maker of programmable semiconductors, said first-quarter net income more than doubled to $95.3 million after sales jumped by a third. Net income rose to 26 cents a share in the period ended July 3 from $46.2 million, or 13 cents, a year earlier. Sales increased 35 percent to $423.6 million from $313.3 million, the San Jose company said.

July 23, 2004
National presents power solution for Xilinx FPGAs - EE Times Asia -
National Semiconductor Corp. has announced an easy-to-use design guide that addresses the power management requirements of FPGAs from Xilinx. National's FPGA design guide includes selection tables linking Xilinx FPGAs with corresponding National Semiconductor voltage regulators, voltage supervisors and voltage references required in each FPGA. It also includes schematics for seven complete reference designs, with fully optimized power supplies for each of the Xilinx FPGAs featured in the guide.

July 22, 2004
Xilinx profit doubles on worldwide sales boost - Reuters -
Xilinx Inc., a maker of programmable microchips, on Thursday said quarterly net income doubled from a year earlier, citing an increase in sales in all regions. The San Jose, California-based company reported a fiscal first quarter profit of $95.3 million, or 26 cents a share, compared to a year-earlier profit of $46.2 million, or 13 cents a share. Revenue grew to $423.6 million, up 35 percent from $313.3

July 22, 2004
Xilinx First-Quarter Profits Double - Forbes.com via Associated Press -
Xilinx Inc. on Thursday reported that profits more than doubled during the fiscal first quarter but the chip maker missed Wall Street revenue expectations and produced weaker-than-expected sales guidance. The company delivered net income of $95.3 million, or 26 cents per share, which was above the $46.2 million, or 13 cents per share, reported last year. Xilinx, which did not provide pro forma numbers, said latest-quarter results included a pretax charge of $7.2 million related to the acquisition of Hier Design.

July 22, 2004
Xilinx Posts Record Gross Margin - Electronic News -
Programmable logic player Xilinx started out its new fiscal year on the right foot, posting big gains in year-over-year revenues and net income. Revenues grew to $423.6 million at the San Jose-based company, up 5 percent sequentially and 35 percent from the same period a year ago.

Jul 19, 2004
FPGAs with 10-Gbit transceivers - CommsDesign.com -
The Virtex II Pro X FPGAs, which sport the company's 10-Gbit I/O technology, are now in production. These FPGAs are equipped with the company's 10-Gbit RocketIO technology, which allows the FPGA's serial transceivers to operate at speeds from 622 to 10.3125 Gbit/s. The FPGAs are equipped with up to 20 transceivers and can also include up to two embedded PowerPC cores.

July 14, 2004
Xilinx rated No.1 by FPGA designers - Strategy.com -
Xilinx, Inc., the world's leading programmable logic supplier, has announced the company took top honors as premier FPGA EDA tool vendor in a survey conducted by
Electronic Engineering Times (EETimes), part of CMP Media LLC. Xilinx earned the highest ranking among respondents, taking the number one slot in all the major categories covering the most important criteria in selecting an FPGA EDA tool vendor. In addition, Xilinx rated number one in measures of user satisfaction and loyalty. The findings serve as a strong testament to the company's commitment to bring best-in-class design tools technology, support and services to handle today's complex system design

July 14, 2004
Xilinx Delivers Lowest Cost, Easy-to-use $99 Spartan-3 FPGA Starter Kit
- eeProductCenter -
Xilinx, Inc. announced the immediate availability of its Spartan-3 Starter Kit, an easy-to-use, low cost development system that provides instant access to the complete platform capabilities of the Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA family. The $99 kit provides all the elements needed to develop, debug and complete a design, including software, JTAG programming cables and training material.

July 14, 2004
Xilinx Demonstrates 10 Gb/sec Signalling Over ATCA Backplane - eeProductCenter -
Xilinx, Inc. announced the demonstration of the world's first 10Gbps AdvancedTCA ("ATCA") backplane powered by its flagship Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs. This establishes a
four-fold performance boost for the existing ATCA serial backplane architecture based on the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) 3.0 specification. Xilinx is
taking an industry leadership role in demonstrating 10Gbps over an ATCA backplane through a combination of standard devices and off-the-shelf serial connectivity technologies.

July 14, 2004
New Tool Consolidates CPLD Logic Design - eeProductCenter -
Xilinx, Inc. the world's leading programmable logic supplier, announced availability of the CPLD Logic Consolidator. This analysis tool permits digital designers and production managers to compare costs between technology alternatives - specifically Xilinx's increasingly popular CPLDs to multiple discrete logic devices. The CPLD Logic Consolidator supports total cost analyses by providing information on component integration cost savings.

July 14, 2004
Spartan 3 Targets 2/3 Power Reduction - eeProductCenter -
Xilinx, Inc. announced availability of reduced power Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs in the fourth quarter of calendar 2004. This development is part of the FPGA leader's continuing
commitment to serve customers who are designing systems with constraints of reduced current and heat dissipation requirements.

July 5, 2004
Big ideas, big man - EETimes -
Design does matter. When I got into electronics journalism, I was clueless (plenty of people tell me that hasn't changed). One of a handful of people who took a lot of time to explain to me the intricacies of the technology, its history and its business was Bernie Vonderschmitt, who passed away last month at 80. Bernie was a class act whose contributions to the innovative spirit in our world are innumerable. At an age when most people start thinking of retiring, Bernie started what would turn out to be a very successful company: Xilinx.

July 2004
FPGAs Go, Go, Go - Chip Design Magazine -
Solving the FPGA timing closure challenge for high-speed designs
It is now possible to implement complete radar processing algorithms on a single multi-million gate FPGA. Most of these systems involve FFT processing along with other DSP algorithms. Clearly, FPGAs are coming into their own as devices for complex designs.
Xilinx Virtex II XC2V6000-4 FPGA and Xilinx Virtex II 6000 device mentioned

July 1, 2004
Automotive Reconfigurable Platforms — Creating the Dream - ECN -
The modern automobile has developed in a remarkable manner over the last 15 years — a reflection of effective competition between manufacturers, rising customer expectations and tighter environmental legislation. As the vehicle manufacturers (VMs) strive to differentiate their products and create increased end-customer demand, our cars are being transformed into a cross between an office on wheels during the day to a mobile entertainment arcade on the weekends.

June 30, 2004
PCI card has four FPGAs - Electronics Weekly -
Nallatech has announced the BenNUEY-PCI-4E, a full length PCI card based on the firm's DIME-II computing architecture, and aimed at computationally intensive network applications such as intrusion detection, content processing and data encryption. The FPGA-based board can host up to four Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs and features four gigabit Ethernet ports, a 64bit/33MHz PCI interface and four RocketIO channels for inter-card communications.

June 29, 2004
Board supports 2G to 3G baseband - Electronics Weekly -
A Xilinx Virtex-II Pro (XC2VP20/30/40) FPGA implements off-board I/O, including network and antenna interfaces, and provides communications routing and processing. Network interface standards supported include: RapidIO, PCI Express, Advanced Switching, GigE, and XAUI; antenna interface standards supported include: CPRI, OBSAI RP3, and proprietary standards.

June 24, 2004
Xilinx Shows 10Gbps Serial Signaling over ATCA - Converge Digest -
Xilinx demonstrated a 10Gbps AdvancedTCA ("ATCA") backplane powered by its flagship Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs. This represents a four-fold performance boost for the existing ATCA serial backplane architecture based on the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) 3.0 specification.

June 22, 2004
Xilinx Demonstrates 10Gbps Serial Signaling over ATCA Backplane - SOC Central -
Xilinx, Inc. has demonstrated a 10Gbps ATCA(Advanced Telecom and Compute Architecture) backplane powered by its Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs. According to the company, this establishes a four-fold performance boost for the existing ATCA serial backplane architecture based on the PICMG 3.0 specification.

June 2004
Xilinx FPGAs for Accelerating DSP System Performance - DSP Engineering E-Letter -
Running out of DSP horsepower? Then use a Xilinx FPGA to accelerate your DSP processors. The new Xilinx System Generator for DSP v6.2 Software Platform makes it even easier for DSP/systems designers unfamiliar with FPGA tools to slash development time from months to days.

June 28, 2004
Avnet, Xilinx deliver ATCA development platform - Electonic Products and Technology -
Avnet Cilicon, a unit of distributor Avnet Inc., Phoenix AZ, and programmable chip maker Xilinx Inc., San Jose CA, have launched the ATCA Development Platform
Program, enabling rapid deployment of Xilinx's new programmable AdvancedTCA solution for product development. The program is a joint effort between the two
companies aimed at accelerating adoption of the ATCA PICMG standard for high-speed networking and communications designs.

June 28, 2004
Beyond Vanilla: XILINX's VIRTEX-4 Family Embeds Application-Specific Mixes Of Hard-Wired Logic, Processors, and I/O For Space And Cost Savings - AnalogZone -
Xilinx, Inc. has unveiled details of its Virtex-4 Platform FPGAs, the fourth generation Virtex product. Enabled by the revolutionary Advanced Silicon Modular Block
(ASMBL) architecture, the Virtex-4 product line is the world's first FPGA family with multiple domain-optimized platforms, offering breakthrough FPGA capability at every
price point. The initial Virtex-4 family includes three platforms; Virtex-4 LX for logic, Virtex-4 SX for very high performance signal processing, and Virtex-4 FX for
embedded processing and high-speed serial connectivity. Each platform will offer a range of device options. With up to 200,000 logic cells and up to 500 MHz
performance the Virtex-4 family delivers twice the density and up to twice the performance of any FPGA in the industry currently in production.

June 28, 2004
Xilinx Ships Domain-Specific FPGAs - Electronic News -
Programmable logic heavyweight Xilinx Inc. today said it is sampling its Virtex-4 FPGAs to early access customers. The Virtex-4 chips mark the first in a line that use
the company's advanced silicon modular block (ASMBL) architecture to create "domain specific" FPGAs that address a specific class of applications.

June 28, 2004
Xilinx pushes backplane to run at 9 Tbits - EE Times -
Xilinx Inc. demonstrated an Advanced TCA platform at Supercomm 2004 here last week that tapped 10-Gbit I/O technology and a low-loss backplane to push overall
backplane performance into the 9-Tbit range. Advanced TCA calls for a backplane bandwidth with 3.125-Gbit/second links to deliver 2.4-Tbit/s performance, said Xilinx
marketing manager Abhijit Athavale. "Through the demo at Supercomm, we're shattering the 2.4-Tbit/s limit," he said.

June 22, 2004
Xilinx Creates Biz Analysis Tool - Electronic News -
Xilinx today will introduce a new weapon in its battle against archrival Altera, a free business analysis tool for the CPLD (complex programmable logic device) market.
The new Logic Consolidator has been used for years by the company’s internal sales force, according to Richard Terrill, senior manager for high-volume products at
Xilinx. He said the goal is to add new and incremental business by giving purchasing managers as well as chip designers a look at the tradeoffs in cost.

June 17, 2004
Top 20 chip companies to boost capital spending - Purchasing Magazine -
Top semiconductor companies are expecting a second straight year of strong revenue growth as strong chip demand in 2003 carried over into 2004. Semiconductor
suppliers and analysts are forecasting a 20% increase in revenue for the year.
Xilinx is ranked 5th for fabless suppliers

June 2004
FPGA PMC I/O modules suit economical apps - Electronic Products -
A line of customizable PMC digital I/O modules allows reconfigurable FPGA flexibility to be applied to midlevel computing functions. The modules use Xilinx 500-Kgate
(PMC-DX500) and 2-Mgate (PMC-DX2000) Virtex-II FPGAs, and offer up to 1 Mbyte of on-chip memory and 9 Mbytes of on-board SRAM.

June 14, 2004
UMC Produces Xilinx FPGAs with Triple-Oxide 90nm - Electronic News -
Taiwanese foundry UMC today said it used a 90nm triple-oxide process to manufacture Xilinx's Virtex-4 FPGA products and realize 50 percent lower power consumption than previous generation devices.

June 14, 2004
Xilinx claims power consumption advantage with UMC’s triple-oxide 90-nm technology
- The Semiconductor Reporter -
Xilinx Inc. announced today that the Virtex-4 FPGAs currently in production at semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corp. incorporate a triple-oxide technology that will cut power consumption in half while significantly increasing performance over earlier devices.

June 11, 2004
Major innovator in chip industry dies - Mercury News -
Bernard Vonderschmitt, one of the humblest CEOs in Silicon Valley, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke. He was 80. Vonderschmitt was a major innovator in the semiconductor industry, but he wasn't as famous as some of his colleagues. He maintained a low profile, and after achieving tremendous success here -- he co-founded San Jose chip developer Xilinx -- he retired to his hometown of Jasper, Ind.

June 11, 2004
Bob Henkel's Chip Alert! - The Semiconductor Reporter -
It was taps this week for an old friend of mine and Silicon Valley legend. Bernie Vonderschmitt, who retired last summer as board chairman of Xilinx, died this week at his hometown of Jasper, Ind. Bernie started up Xilinx 20 years ago at age 60 and pioneered a radical new business model -- the company's fabless strategy of forming close partnerships with manufacturers like Taiwan foundry United Microelectronics. I first met Bernie back in the 1970s when he was running RCA's Solid State division in Jersey. He worked for RCA for 34 years, and was one of the developers of color TV at the consumer electronics company. Bernie was a decent, caring guy as well as a good news source -- I'll miss him.

June 10, 2004
Programmable-logic directory - EDN -
Programmable-logic devices are the fastest growing segment of the logic-device family for two fundamental reasons. Their ever-increasing gate count per device gathers up functions that you might otherwise spread over a number of discrete-logic and memory chips. This approach improves end-system size, power consumption, performance, reliability, and cost. Equally important, you can in seconds or minutes configure and, in many cases, reconfigure these devices at your workstation or in the system-assembly line. This capability provides powerful flexibility to react to last-minute design changes, to prototype ideas before implementation, and to meet time-to-market deadlines that both customer needs and competitive pressures dictate. Xilinx and Altera mentioned

June 8, 2004
Virtex-4: Xilinx Details Its Next Generation - FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal -
In the 90s, it was obvious that within the decade, exploding gate counts would outstrip our ability to design. The popular debate topic at that time was how the “white space” would be used. “White space” represented the difference between the number of available gates on a semiconductor device, and the number of gates we could successfully design correctly using current methodologies. Speculation ran rampant that large amounts of RAM, immense IP blocks, and system-on-chip integration would help us fill some of the space, but the overall question remained.

June 8, 2004
Xilinx to produce new 90nm FPGA at UMC first, says marketing VP - DigiTimes -
Xilinx will first pilot run its new 90nm FPGA – Virtex 4 – at Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), said Sandeep Vij, Xilinx vice president for worldwide marketing. Traditionally, Xilinx tended to first test produce chips with IBM Microelectronics. However, sources have suggested that the US-based foundry has lagged UMC in improving yield rates for using FSG dielectric on 90nm-based chip production. IBM’s holdup on the process had led Xilinx to produce advanced products such as Spartan 3 – also a 90nm-based FPGA – mainly at UMC, as reported on February 13.

June 8, 2004
DAC: Acquisition by Design - Electronic News -
Three acquisitions on the first day of the Design Automation Conference has got to be a record, even in an industry segment that has been rife with acquisition fever
since its inception. Xilinx announced its intention to buy Hier Design, an FPGA floorplanning company in which Cadence Design Systems and Xilinx were co-investors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, except to say that the price tag was less than 1 percent of the total assets of Xilinx.

June 8, 2004
DAC: Xilinx Acquires Floorplanning Player - Electronic News -
While 90nm process technology enables higher density and higher performance FPGA devices than ever before, it introduces new design challenges at the same time.
To combat these challenges, which include slow or unpredictable routing results, routing congestion, tightly packed designs and the inability to maintain design
performance, Xilinx Inc. today said it would acquire Hier Design, a privately held EDA company whose tools exclusively support Xilinx FPGAs, to address those issues.

June 8, 2004
Analysts: Adjustable chips will flourish - Mercury News -
Imagine a cell phone that easily changes networks as you travel the globe, or a home security camera that alerts you if your toddler wanders too close to the swimming
pool. Configurable chips are not an entirely new concept. Companies like Xilinx and Altera, both of San Jose, have been developing chips that have areas that can be
reprogrammed by the customer.

June 7, 2004
Xilinx acquires floor planner startup - EETimes -
Xilinx Inc. has acquired privately held FPGA floor planning vendor Hier Design Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition give Xilinx 13 new
employees and the PlanAhead floor planning software that, according Lee Hansen, product marketing manager of software product marketing at Xilinx, allows users of
Xilinx' newly announced Virtex-4 FPGAs to optimize the floor plans of the new devices. "The fit is ideal," said Hansen. "With the increase in design size and complexity
in new FPGA families there is great demand for Hier's technology." Xilinx also gains Hier's touted FPGA floor planner and a new optional timing engine for the floor
planner.

June 7, 2004
Xilinx buys Hier Design - Silicon Vally Business Journal -
Privately-held Hier Design, Inc., of Santa Clara, which makes software used to design high-performance field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips, has been acquired
by Xilinx, Inc., of San Jose, which makes that type of computer chip. Xilinx has been an investor in Hier. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. However,
the acquisition represents less than 1 percent of the total assets of Xilinx as of the end of its fourth quarter in April, the company says. The majority of Hier Design
employees will become Xilinx employees within the design software division.

June 7, 2004
Virtex 4 comes in three flavours - Electronics Weekly -
Xilinx has announced Virtex 4, its latest top end FPGAs, with three different families for general purpose, signal processing or high speed serial applications. Virtex 4 is
the first implementation of the firm’s ASMBL architecture, which lays down logic, memory, DSP and other resources in vertical stripes on the substrate.

June 7, 2004
Xilinx Unveils "Domain-Specific" Products - Electronic News -
FPGA maker Xilinx today took the next step in what it believes will help it capture a significantly higher portion of the ASIC and ASSP market. The company's next
generation product, Virtex-4, will be built the same technology as previous Virtex generations, but will be the first embodiment of the ASMBL architecture announced by
Xilinx in December.

June 7, 2004
FPGAs to be fine-tuned by domain - EETimes -
To FPGA vendor Xilinx Inc., the future of programmable logic looks as bright as ever. But if the company's forthcoming Virtex 4 is any indication, it's no longer business
as usual. Slated for introduction this summer, Virtex 4 is the closest Xilinx has come to making application-specific devices with narrow market appeal.

June 7, 2004
Xilinx Unveils 'Domain-Specific' Products - Electronic News -
FPGA maker Xilinx today took the next step in what it believes will help it capture a significantly higher portion of the ASIC and ASSP market.The San Jose-based
company provided a glimpse of the first products that will use its new "advanced silicon modular block" (ASMBL) architecture.

June 6, 2004
Xilinx tops ranks of FPGA and EDA vendors - EEDesign -
Xilinx Inc. rules the roost in terms of design technologies offered by FPGA vendors, Mentor had the strongest showing among commercial EDA vendors but Synplicity
and Xilinx tied for top spot in customer satisfaction, according to the first ever FPGA EDA study conducted by EE Times. Earlier studies covered IC EDA and a PCB tool
study based on data collected from readers. This year, FPGA design tools were added to the study results. A summary of the PCB EDA study as well as the IC EDA
study can be found on eeDesign.com.

June 2, 2004
History Lesson in Recovery - EETimes -
As we head into the second half of what most now will call a bona fide recovery year, there is a resounding sense of optimism, albeit something less than the
exuberance that ushered in the last great upswing. And that is a good thing. Measured caution and rational thinking should carry the day throughout the rest of 2004 and
into 2005. Wim Roelandts is President and CEO, Xilinx, Inc. and Chairman, Fabless Semiconductor Association

May 31,2004
Virtex-II Pro Processing Modules Boost Performance on VMEbus, PCI Motherboards - Market Wire -
The BenDATA-II is the latest high performance-density DIME-II processing module from Nallatech, Inc. and brings additional processing capability and flexibility to the company's DIME-II range of PCI, PC/104, cPCI and VME system motherboards.

May 27, 2004
A different kind of recovery arrives - EETimes -
This is not your father's recovery. It's a new day, many say, driven less by the familiar PC and more by whims of consumer electronics, wireless and a market and supply
base more global than ever before. Despite a more mature, conservative spirit, the industry has yet to sort out nagging, knotty problems that start deep inside the silicon
and extend out into the far-flung supply chain. Sandeep Vij, vice president of marketing at Xilinx Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), which supplies FPGAs to a smorgasbord of
electronics companies, talks about a recovery in shades of paranoia. "Right now we're seeing a big uptick: In two quarters, our business has gone up roughly 25 percent.
The emotions have ranged from wondering just eight months ago if the recovery would ever happen to worrying about how are we going to get enough wafers," Vij said.
"People were hit so hard by the downturn that there is a very guarded optimism. No one believes this quarterly growth is sustainable. People are pretty cautious about the
summer. The thinking is there will be a correction or moderation."

May 2004
Wireless Front - Wireless System Design -
Xilinx, Inc. is offering a free, fully functional Configurable Physical Coding Sublayer (CPCS) reference design for a multi-mode PCS block. It is implemented in Xilinx Virtex-II Pro field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The CPCS can be dynamically configured to support three types of PCS layers including Fibre Channel (1.0625 and 2.125 Gbps), Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-X), and ESCON/SBCON (200 Mbps). The CPCS reference design is ideal for applications including Ethernet/Fibre Channel switches, multi-service provisioning platforms (MSPPs), SONET/SDH terminals, add-drop multiplexers (ADMs), cross connects, CWDM/DWDM transport equipment, and IP routers. The fully documented CPCS reference design is now available free of charge. All documentation and design files can be downloaded from the Xilinx web site at
www.xilinx.com/esp/cpcs/.

May 6, 2004
RIO solution for Virtex-II Pro - CommsDesign -
A set of serial RapidIO intellectual property cores is now available that allows designers to build a full endpoint on a Virtex-II Pro FPGA. The IP cores implement the physical, logical, and transport layers of the serial RIO 1.2 specification and leverages the 3.125-Gbit/s RocketIO transceivers on the FPGA. The physical layer core supports one lane operating with 64-bit internal data path and meets the required electrical and timing parameters for all three baud rates: 1.25, 2.5, and 3.125 Gbit/s. The cores also offer retry time-of-day sync, stomp, transmission error recovery, throttle-based flow control, and multicast capabilities

May 3, 2004
RapidIO Ascendant - AnalogZone -
Since silicon is the key ingredient of any system, it's good to see so much support for both the parallel and serial flavors of RapidIO. At SNDF, Xilinx introduced IP to support 1.25 Gbit/s, 2.5 Gbit/s and 3.125 Gbit/s serial RapidIO links in its Virtex-II series to add to its existing parallel RapidIO capabilities. Besides enabling many devices to have RIO, it also will help bridge the PQIII's parallel RapidIO interface to serial RIO backplane meshes that are beginning to emerge -- especially in TCA applications where it's defined as one of the interconnect technologies. Lattice Semiconductor also introduced the IP required to implement a serial RapidIO port on its ORT82G5 & ORT42G5 FPSC devices.

May 3, 2004
The Chronicle 200 - The San Francisco Chronicle -
The top 200 Bay Area companies, ranked by revenue. Amounts in millions of dollars.

May 3, 2004
CEO Approval Ratings - Forbes -
Our CEO approval ratings lets you vote on the job performance of the country's most prominent business leaders, from Jeffrey Bezos to Craig Barrett to Rupert Murdoch. We've tracked the monthly approval ratings of 50 prominent corporate honchos, and have added ten new ones from the Internet and semiconductor sectors.

April 29, 2004
Xilinx Queries SRAM Errors in FPGA Tests - Electronics Weekly -
Xilinx has responded to claims made last week that SRAM-based FPGAs are more susceptible to logic errors caused by neutron scattering events than first thought.

April 29, 2004
2004 DSP directory - EDN -
An example of this emerging marketing shift is the public position that Texas Instruments and Xilinx are taking; their products are complementary rather than competitive. The standard DSP devices represent an implementation for the lowest cost and the lowest power consumption with the right amount of performance for required and commodity functions.

April 28, 2004
Top 300 global electronics companies - Electronic Business -
Xilinx is ranked 250

April 27, 2004
Lucent chooses Xilinx FPGAs for tunable optical translator unit - LightWave -
Lucent Technologies has selected Xilinx field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for its new 10-Gbit/sec tunable optical translator unit, a key component in one of its DWDM-based metro optical platforms. At the core of this advanced design is a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA, with the embedded IBM PowerPC running Linux.

April 26, 2004
Nvidia, Xilinx use CellMath, Arithmatica goes to 65-nm - Silicon Strategies -
Arithmatica, Inc., a company that claimed it could improve silicon performance and reduce die area with its innovations in mathematical circuit blocks, has revealed that Xilinx Inc. and Nvidia Corp. are two companies that have used its CellMath
libraries.

April 26, 2004
Movers and Shakers: Best Companies to Work For - Electronic Business -
In our second-annual Best Companies to Work For survey, our readers select the best of the best in the electronics industry. These companies believe that happy and
content employees are critical to their success. In a time when many are having layoffs and trying to downsize their organizations, these companies are trying to ensure
future growth and prosperity by focusing on retaining their key talent. As you’ll see, it’s all about getting the right kind of organizational balance to create a world-class
corporation.

April 26, 2004
Faster Processing or Less Power - Electronic News -
The future of power management literally may be new math.
At least that’s the contention of Arithmatica, a start-up that today will unveil a more efficient algorithmic model for chips. And while the original goal was to make chips run
faster, the more practical application may be to use less power to do the same things.

April 26, 2004
Xilinx Ships RapidIO Core for Virtex-II Pro - Electronic News -
Xilinx Inc. today said that its new RapidIO Serial Endpoint IP core is now available -- touting it as a complete FPGA-based solution due to the combination of the parallel
RapidIO endpoint IP core and PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group-compliant AdvancedTCA Development platform.

April 23, 2004
Profits Skyrocket 165% at Xilinx - Electronic News -
Sales of new products drove revenues way up at programmable logic company, Xilinx Inc. The San Jose-based company reported Q4 revenues of $403.4 million, up 10
percent sequentially and 32 percent year-over-year.

April 23, 2004
300-mm wafers reach 'crossover,' say PLD makers - EE Times -
Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. said that the cost of producing their devices using 300-mm wafers has fallen below that of 200-mm wafers, an indication that Taiwanese
foundries have hit their much sought after "crossover" production milestone. At Xilinx, 50 percent of the products built by foundry partner United Microelectronics Corp. are
from 300-mm wafers. The company expects that to reach 60 percent of total production by year's end.

April 22, 2004
Xilinx posts Q4 results, sets first dividend - Investors Business Daily -
Xilinx posted sales at the top of its predicted range for it fiscal fourth quarter late Thursday, declared its first dividend and expanded its stock repurchase program. Shares (XLNX: news, chart, profile) of the programmable chipmaker fell 2.4 percent to $37.70. Xilinx' largest competitor, Altera (ALTR: news, chart, profile), surpassed its financial targets when it reported financial results late Wednesday. Nonetheless, Xilinx posted sequential new product growth of 24 percent, as well as higher sales from all
geographies and product lines.

April 20, 2004
Xilinx takes on high-speed board layout - EE Times -
There was a time when PLD maker Xilinx Inc. would make a large-density chip and then show customers how to program it. Now the company said its going one step
further and showing them how lay it out on a board.

April 19,2004
Neutron storm swirls around FPGA reliability - EETimes -
Actel Corp. (Mountain View, Calif.) on Monday (April 19) will release a report indicating that normal neutron flux even at the Earth's surface can alter the configuration of SRAM-based FPGAs. Actel will use the data to argue that its antifuse and flash-based field-programmable gate arrays are a better choice than SRAM-based parts in failure-sensitive applications. But SRAM FPGA vendors like Xilinx and Altera counter that the new data is consistent with a large body of existing measurements that in fact show how resistant SRAM-based FPGAs are to neutron radiation.

April 13, 2004
Analyst predicts good times will continue for chip makers - San Jose Silicon Valley Business Journal -
The semiconductor industry should continue its resurgence as companies report first quarter earnings over the next few weeks, an industry analyst says. Although
semiconductor industry revenues are forecast to decline 1.2 percent in the first quarter, ended March 31, it would be a seasonal dip far less significant than the typical 3
percent to 5 percent drop, says Erach Deshai, an analyst at AmTech Research. First quarter forecasts are influenced by broader end-market demand, continued strong
growth in bookings and a firming up of pricing, meaning chip companies didn't have to discount products in order to sell them, his AmTech report states. Mr. Deshai
forecasts continued profitability gains for chip companies he follows. While they do not include industry leader Intel Corp., of Santa Clara, they do include Silicon
Valley-based Xilinx, Inc., Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Integrated Device Technology Inc.

April 2004
DSP board features high I/O bandwidth - Electronic Products -
The T2-PCI DSP board features an Analog Devices TigerSHARC microprocessor and a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA, which together allow off-board communication at
greater than 4.8 Gbytes/s. The FPGA both implements eight TigerSHARC link ports and routes communications and translating protocols.

April 12, 2004
Xilinx, Broadcom Lead 2003 Revenue Growth - Electronic News -
Among the top 30 chipmakers, the more notable changes include Xilinx, which broke into the top 30 at number 24 with a 50 percent revenue increase to $1.3 billion last year, according to Semico. Broadcom also jumped from 27th to 21st place with a 48.7 leap in revenue growth to $1.6 billion, and a gain of 0.2 points of market share, Semico said.

April 12, 2004
Synplicity Speeds FPGA Verification with Breakthrough Incremental Debug for Xilinx Devices - EEDesign -
Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq:SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, today announced it has enhanced its Identify(TM) RTL debugging software with major new features to extend its capabilities for FPGA and ASIC prototype hardware debugging. The Identify 2.0 software now features a fast and safe incremental flow for Xilinx FPGAs that allows designers to first debug specific signals in their hardware and then change those signals in a matter of minutes, thereby enabling a real-time, debug-centric verification approach.

April 12, 2004
Synplicity spins Xilinx-specific version of RTL debugger - EETimes -
Synplicity Inc. will release a version of its Identify RTL debugging software this week (April 12) with new features targeting users of Xilinx Inc. FPGAs.

April 9, 2004
People on the move - San Jose Mercury News -
Applied Materials of Santa Clara named Xilinx Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Willem P. Roelandts to its board of directors.

April 6, 2004
Firmware for the Common Man - FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal -
A colleague told me that the embedded systems conference felt different this year. Yes, it was the first run of the new 4-in-1 super-conference which combined the Embedded Systems Conference with the Communications Design Conference, Power Electronics, and Emerging Technologies Forum to form the obliquely-named “ElectronicaUSA” in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Xilinx devices were ubiquitous. I could not walk more than a few paces on the show floor without encountering another proudly displayed all-the-stuff-you-need-to-prototype-your-widget board with one to six Virtex II Pro packages bonded to the surface.

March 31, 2004
Accelerated Technology Offers Complete Nucleus Development Environment for Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs - My Way Finance -
Accelerated Technology(R), the Embedded Systems Division of Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced support for the hard PowerPC core embedded in Xilinx Virtex-II Pro(TM) field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with the release of the Nucleus(R) Real-Time Operating System (RTOS), Microtec(R) C and C++ compilation tools and the XRAY(R) Debugger. Virtex-II Pro developers in the automotive, network infrastructure, storage area networks (SAN), telecom, medical and military/aerospace markets now have access to a complete family of software products from which to build embedded applications that need digital signal processing (DSP), high-speed serial connectivity and embedded processing.

March 30, 2004
Who’s News Briefs (pdf.) - Wall Street Journal -
APPLIED MATERIALS Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) -- Willem P. Roelandts, 59, was named a director of this maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. He is president, chief executive officer and chairman of chip maker Xilinx Inc. The appointment expands Applied's board to 11 members.

March 30, 2004
Daily News Briefs - Photonics -
Willem Roelandts, president, CEO and chairman of chip maker Xilinx Inc., has been named a board member at Applied Materials Inc. Prior to joining Xilinx in 1996, Roelandts was an executive at Hewlett-Packard Co. He is also on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Technology Network and is chairman of the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

March 30, 2004
Fabless Semiconductor Association Names Dwight Decker Vice Chairman of Board of Directors; Conexant Chairman to Expand Leadership Role with the FSA - Business Wire via TMC.Net -
The Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA), the global voice for fabless and hybrid semiconductor companies and their foundry and supply-chain partners, announced today that Dr. Dwight Decker, FSA board member since 2001 and chairman of Conexant Systems, Inc., has been named vice chairman of the Association's board of directors by Wim Roelandts, chairman of the FSA board and president and CEO of Xilinx, Inc.

March 29, 2004
Xilinx Chips Enable electronicaUSA/ESC Best of Show Finalist in Sensio's 3D Wireless Home Theater System - PR Newswire via Comtex -
At electronicaUSA (eUSA) with the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) today, Xilinx, Inc., (XLNX), announced a collaboration that resulted in a breakthrough 3D video processing technology. The SENSIO 3D system is a prior winner of the CES Product Innovation Award and a finalist in this year's electronicaUSA Best of Show competition.

March 29, 2004
Virtex-II Pro boards host 350,000 logic cells - Electronics Weekly -
Scottish firm Nallatech has introduced a number of programmable logic boards based around Xilinx’ Virtex-II Pro FPGAs. The boards add to the firm’s DIME-II family, and include a VME motherboard, a full length PCI motherboard and a daughter card. Boards contain up to four Virtex-II Pros, three 2VP100s and one 2VP50. It gives an aggregate of over 350,000 logic cells, 1,564 embedded multipliers and 28Mbit of block RAM.

March 29, 2004
Xilinx CEO Roelandts joins Applied Materials' board - Silicon Strategies -
Willem Roelandts, chief executive officer and chairman of Xilinx Inc., has joined the board of Applied Materials Inc., Applied said Friday (March 26). Prior to joining Xilinx in 1996, Roelandts held several executive positions during a 29-year career at Hewlett-Packard Co. Active in industry affairs, Roelandts serves on the board of directors of the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Technology Network. He also serves as chairman of the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

March 29, 2004
Applied Names Xilinx's CEO to Board - Electronic News -
Xilinx Inc. Chairman and CEO Willem P. Roelandts has joined Applied Materials' board of directors. The move was made Friday and took affect immediately. Prior to joining Xilinx in 1996, Roelandts held several executive positions during a 29-year career at Hewlett-Packard Co. Roelandts also serves on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Technology Network and as chairman of the Fabless Semiconductor Association.

March 26, 2004
FPGA platform launches speedy designs - Machine Design -
Champ-FX 6U VME form-factor boards from Dy 4 Systems, Kanata, Ontario, Canada, use a core comprised of dual Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs. Each FPGA includes 256 Mbytes of DDR SDRAM and 8 Mbytes of DDRII SRAM that together provide more than 8 Gbytes/sec of memory bandwidth. Algorithms needing intermediate storage benefit from the fast SRAM, while the larger SDRAM handles input and output data buffers. Both memories serve application code running on the Virtex II Pro's hardwired PowerPC.

March 26, 2004
Chips: Ready to Bounce Back - Business Week Online -
Street estimates for Xilinx (XLNX , 5 STARS, $38) are for growth of about 27% in fiscal year 2005 (ending March), vs. our estimate of 30%. We think that the largest maker of programmable logic devices (PLD chips) will grow a bit faster than the industry pace, as PLD chips are selling into new markets, particularly in consumer and industrial areas. Granted, the fiscal year for Xilinx is one quarter different from the calendar year used by market resear

March 24, 2004
ASIC-FPGA high wire act - EBN -
This article makes a strong case for FPGAs over ASICs, with one Xilinx customer (OctigaBay Systems) describing ASICs as "a last resort nowadays." His perspective is based on a choice the company made to use Virtex II Pro in both a prototype, and eventually the production version of its 12K supercomputer - opting for the Xilinx product over structured ASIC alternatives from AMI, LSI and Toshiba. He says the choice saved him between $2-5M in NRE costs. The article also explores the semantics of "structured" vs.. "platform" ASIC. It also extrapolates the potential cost savings of using FPGAs over ASICs, both in terms of time and money. The article concludes that FPGAs are "the lowest risk path" compared to ASICs.

March 24, 2004
Startup HyWire set to unveil FPGA-based search engine - EE Times -
An Israeli startup will exhibit a module that spotlights two breakthroughs for its search-engine architecture at the Communications Design Conference here next week. HyWire Ltd. uses Xilinx Inc.'s Spartan FPGAs to implement the HyWire search engine manager and HyWire counter/statistics engine in an evaluation BGA module called HyFlex.

March 24, 2004
Xilinx, Adobe drag down SVI - Daily Review -
Stocks of Silicon Valley companies fell for a fourth day, led by Xilinx Inc., Adobe Systems Inc. and Maxim Integrated Products Inc., as the three leading U.S. stock indexes declined. San Jose-based Xilinx, the world's biggest maker of programmable semiconductors, fell 72 cents to $35.25. Shares of Xilinx have fallen 22 percent since reaching a 52-week high of $45.40 on Jan. 22.

March 22, 2004 - Startup HyWire set to unveil FPGA-based search engine - CommsDesign -
An Israeli startup will exhibit a module that spotlights two breakthroughs for its search-engine architecture at the Communications Design Conference here next week. HyWire Ltd. uses Xilinx Inc.'s Spartan FPGAs to implement the HyWire search engine manager and HyWire counter/statistics engine in an evaluation BGA module called HyFlex.

March 18, 2004 - Xilinx Expands in Japan with Ryoyo Electro - Embedded Star -
Xilinx K.K., the Japanese subsidiary of the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic solutions, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), recently entered into a distributor agreement with Ryoyo Electro Corporation

March 16, 2004 - Tyco Electronics Converters Used by Xilinx Inc. - Power Electronics Technology -
Four of Tyco Electronics Power Systems dc-dc converters have been adopted by Xilinx Inc.’s AdvancedTCA-compliant development platform. Xilinx launched its Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) platform at the Intel Developer Forum held the week of February 17 in San Francisco, Calif

March 15, 2004 - Fabless revenues jumped in 2003 - Silicon Valley San Jose Business Journal -
Xilinx is mentioned as one of the three companies disclosing the highest profits in 2003. According to the FSA, Xilinx profits were ($69.5 million), just below MediaTek ($143.5 million)and SanDisk ($87.8 million)

March 15, 2004 - Xilinx bolsters profile in fast-growing embedded market - Electronics Products & Technology -
Programmable logic IC manufacturer Xilinx Inc., San Jose Ca, has signed an agreement to acquire configurable embedded microcontroller technology provider Triscend Corp., Mountain View CA. Xilinx says the merger will bolster its rapidly growing presence in the embedded market. The majority of Triscend’s 40 employees will become Xilinx employees.

March 12, 2004 - Turns out it was Xilinx that outbid ARM to buy Triscend - Semiconductor Reporter -
A couple of weeks ago, ARM, UK microprocessor core supplier, suddenly pulled out of a deal to buy Triscend, one of its licensees, The fabless supplier of configurable microcontrollers that are based on ARM's architecture had received a better offer. This week the high bidder was identified. Xilinx says it has signed a deal to acquire Triscend. It wouldn't say how much it was paying, but it reportedly was more than the $15 million in cash that ARM had offered. The acquisition will beef up Xilinx's rapidly growing presence in the embedded controller market. The merger will create "a powerful combination of embedded technology, tools, and expertise" that will "deepen Xilinx's market penetration in the embedded market place," claims Reynette Au, CEO of Triscend. Triscend's configurable microcontrollers are used in industrial controls, security systems, and consumer electronics and can be combined with programmable logic, microprocessors, memory, and buses to create single-chip customized solutions.

March 12, 2004 - The Two Best Investments In Semiconductors - Forbes -
Banc of America Securities raised earnings expectations and the 12-month price target on National Semiconductor (nyse: NSM - news - people ), after the company reported third-quarter results that topped expectations. Banc of America raised the fiscal 2004 and 2005 earnings estimates to $1.61 per share and $2.30, from $1.39 and $1.72, respectively; it raised National Semiconductor's price target to $45 from $40. Banc of America still rates the stock at "neutral." The research firm said, "With the current semiconductor cycle approaching maturity, and a peak in earnings estimates revisions increasingly imminent, we expect more of the same i.e., adjustment of stock prices to reflect a more reasonable multiple to peak earnings." In the semiconductors sector, Banc of America's top picks are Xilinx (nasdaq: XLNX - news - people ) and Synopsys (nasdaq: SNPS - news - people ), both rated at "buy" with price targets of $50 and $38. The firm's least favorite in the sector is Mentor Graphics (nasdaq: MENT - news - people ), which it rates at "sell" with a price target of $6

March 9, 2004 - Xilinx Looks to Nu Horizons for India Expansion - Electronic News -
Xilinx Inc. and active component player Nu Horizons Electronics Corp. have expanded their distribution agreement to include the burgeoning market of India. This agreement, effective immediately, and marks the first franchise agreement outside of North and South America between the two companies since their partnership inception in 1987. "As Asia/Pacific continues to play a prominent strategic role in Xilinx's global expansion, we are pleased to add Nu Horizons to our worldwide distribution network," said David Loftus, managing director of Asia/Pacific at Xilinx, in a statement. "The Nu Horizons demand creation model has led to a successful partnership between our organizations. This model, combined with our aggressive growth strategy for all programmable logic devices, made expanding into India our next logical step." Nu Horizons will manage the Xilinx distribution program from its existing facility in Bangalore, in addition to its New Delhi facility, which is scheduled to open in April 2004. The distribution of all Xilinx FPGAs, CPLDs, software and development tools, and intellectual property cores, as well as all demand creation and engineering support, will also be regionally based from the dual locations, it was said.

March 9, 2004 - Xilinx Acquires Triscend - Electronic News
Xilinx Inc. today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Triscend Corp., a configurable embedded microcontroller company that was recently in a purchasing play by ARM. The U.K. IP company announced in late February that it had been outbid for Triscend. Like ARM's play, today's announcement from Xilinx did not disclose financial details. Xilinx did say, however, that it is paying less than 1 percent of its total assets for the MCU company. “The significant talent and technology at the core of Triscend will strengthen our efforts in the embedded processing space, accelerating future development of embedded solutions and speeding our market ramp in this important emerging market,” said Erich Goetting, VP and GM of the advanced product division at Xilinx, in a statement. The majority of Triscend’s 40 employees, currently located at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., will become Xilinx employees, it was said. Xilinx anticipates booking the acquisition in its fiscal Q4, ending April 3. NOTE: This article also ran in Electronic Weekly

March 8, 2004 - Xilinx sees logic of Triscend configurable microcontroller buy - Silicon Strategies -
Xilinx Inc. said Monday (March 8, 2004) that it has signed an agreement to acquire Triscend Corp., a developer of configurable embedded microcontrollers that combine ARM processor cores with field programmable logic. Triscend had been the subject of a merger agreement with ARM Holdings plc that collapsed in February 2004. The majority of Triscend's 40 employees, currently located at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, would become Xilinx employees, Xilinx said.

March 8, 2004 - Xilinx announces agreement to buy reconfigurable MCU supplier Triscend
The Semiconductor Reporter -
Xilinx Inc. turns out to be the company interested in buying ARM-core-based reconfigurable microcontroller supplier Triscend Corp. that bumped ARM Holdings Ltd. out of contention late last month (see Feb. 25 story). Xilinx announced today that it has signed a deal to acquire Triscend. Terms were not disclosed, but when the ARM-Triscend deal, worth $15 million in cash, was called off, Triscend was said to have received a better offer. Triscend was also said to be paying ARM an undisclosed amount for pulling out of their agreement.

March 4, 2004 - Synplicity Enhances Support for Xilinx's ISE 6.2I with FPGA Synthesis - Embedded Star -
Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP), a leading supplier of software for the design and verification of semiconductors, announced it has enhanced its FPGA synthesis and physical synthesis software to provide optimized support for the latest version of Xilinx’s Integrated Software Environment (ISETM). The Synplify Pro® software and Amplify® Physical OptimizerTM software provide enhanced timing correlation and an improvement in overall quality of results (QoR), playing a large role in the performance advantage announced separately today by Xilinx in its ISE 6.2i press release. In addition to offering Synplicity’s signature benefits, such as fast runtimes and ease of use, the Synplify Pro 7.5 and Amplify 3.5 tools build upon Synplicity’s true timing-driven synthesis technology to provide designers with just enough performance to meet timing goals while using the smallest and least costly device possible. [read more]

March 3, 2004 - Tow Picks and One Pan in Semiconductors - Forbes -
Banc of America Securities upgraded Altera (nasdaq: ALTR - news - people ), a maker of system-on-a-programmable-chip solutions, to "neutral" from "sell" with a 12-month price target of $21. Banc of America cited the "abatement" of concerns, including ongoing sluggishness in the company's end-markets, "slightly lower earnings quality" and continued market share losses against its primary competitor, Xilinx (nasdaq: XLNX - news - people ). However, the research firm said it still prefers Xilinx to Altera. "Simply put, we believe that Xilinx will continue to outperform Altera's over the next few quarters, despite evidence of better execution at Altera," Banc of America said. In fact Xilinx and Synopsys (nasdaq: SNPS - news - people ) are Banc of America's two top picks among semiconductor stocks; the research firm rates both Xilinx and Synopsys at "buy" with price targets of $50 and $38, respectively. Banc of America's least favorite company in the group is Mentor Graphics (nasdaq: MENT - news - people ), rated at "sell" with a price target of $6.

March 2, 2004 - Fairchild, Xilinx to slightly raise quarterly forecast - Silicon Strategies -
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Xilinx Inc. and Fairchild Semiconductor International today (March 2, 2004) separately raised their forecasts. Xilinx expects its March quarter revenues to be up 9-to-10 percent sequentially. Previously, Xilinx expected its revenues to increase 7-to-10 percent sequentially.

March 2, 2004 - Xilinx revises FPGA design software - EE Times -

Xilinx Inc. said Version 6.2i of its integrated software environment (ISE) for FPGA design taps optimizations that deliver a 40 percent performance boost in Virtex-II Pro FPGAs. Improvements to the ISE's routing engines result in faster designs using less FPGA area, said Steve Sharp, senior marketing manager of corporate solutions. A new automatic hold-time eliminator and improved delay estimator in the ISE router improve performance on highly packed designs. And a new version of ProActive timing closure taps physical-synthesis technology that generates physically correct, timing-driven implementations in one pass, Xilinx said.

March 2004 Avnet, Xilinx deliver ATCA development platform - Electronic Product & Technology -

Avnet Cilicon, a unit of distributor Avnet Inc., Phoenix AZ, and programmable chip maker Xilinx Inc., San Jose CA, have launched the ATCA Development Platform Program, enabling rapid deployment of Xilinx's new programmable AdvancedTCA solution for product development. The program is a joint effort between the two companies aimed at accelerating adoption of the ATCA PICMG standard for high-speed networking and communications designs. Xilinx says it introduced the industry's first AdvancedTCA-compliant development platform at the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco CA. The platform demonstration there showcased Xilinx's new Advanced Switching IP core in an ATM software application that features Intel network processors and Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs.

March 2004 Xilinx chips land on Mars - Electronic Product & Technology -

Radiation tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) manufactured by programmable logic supplier Xilinx Inc., San Jose CA, are aboard the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars exploration missions. Radiation-tolerant Virtex FPGAs are being used in the main brain of the rover vehicle, controlling the motors for the wheels, steering, arms, cameras and various instrumentation, enabling the vehicle to travel about the planet. XQVR4000XL devices were used to control the crucial pyrotechnic operations during the multi-phase descent and landing procedure.

March 2004 - CEO Approval Ratings - Forbes -

Our CEO approval ratings lets you vote on the job performance of the country's most prominent business leaders, from Jeffrey A. Bezos to Craig Barrett to Rupert Murdoch. We've tracked the monthly approval ratings of 50 prominent corporate honchos, and have added ten new ones from the Internet and semiconductor sectors. Bookmark this page and come back throughout the month to see how these bosses are faring. Plus, compare how they stacked up last month. Be sure to vote--but remember you can vote only once per month for each CEO.

March rating in Semiconductor:
Willem Roelandts, Xilinx 75%
Tom Engibous, Texas Instruments 69%
Alan E. Ross, Broadcom 69%
Craig R. Barrett, Intel 54%
Hector De J Ruiz, Advanced Micro Devices 31%

February 26, 2004 - Xilinx forms Indian joint development center for FPGAs - EE Times -

Xilinx Inc. has announced a partnership with CMC Ltd. for a joint development center in Hyderabad in southern India. The Xilinx-CMC India Development Center will focus on FPGA development for markets such as digital consumer electronics, automotive and communications, the partners said Thursday (Feb. 26). The R&D center is one of the first in the region for Xilinx (San Jose, Calif.). It will provide management support, while CMC runs the center with dedicated technology and managerial staff.

February 25, 2004 - Xilinx to set up R&D centre with India's CMC - Reuters -

Xilinx Inc, the world's largest programmable microchip maker, and Indian software services firm CMC said on Wednesday they would jointly develop services for the consumer electronics, communications and automotive industries. In a joint statement, California-based Xilinx (XLNX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and CMC Ltd (CMC.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) said they were setting up a joint development centre in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

February 25, 2004 - RESEARCH ALERT-Lehman ups Xilinx rating - Reuters -

Lehman Brothers said on Wednesday it raised its rating on Xilinx Inc. (XLNX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to "overweight" from "equal weight."

February 23, 2004 - Avnet, Xilinx Ink Deal - Electronic News -

Avnet Cilicon and Xilinx have jointly launched an ATCA Development Platform Program, designed to enable rapid deployment of Xilinx’s recently released programmable AdvancedTCA tool for product development. The joint effort aims to accelerate adoption of the ATCA PICMG standard for high-speed networking and communications design.

February 22, 2004 - Some jobs may not return: Global, U.S. factors combine to create new business model - San Francisco Chronicle -

Geo. M. Martin Co. is in one tough business -- making the machines that make corrugated boxes. It's an industry that's been shrinking as hundreds of the manufacturers that use such boxes close shop in the United States and move factories overseas.... But large organizations are feeling the strain, too. It's especially evident in Silicon Valley, where technology companies cut sharply and are now struggling to meet rising demand. Technology jobs have yet to come back, but that could change. "We are going to have to start hiring some people quickly," said Kris Chellam, chief financial officer at Xilinx, a San Jose semiconductor maker. "The company is clearly stretched. We've kept things as tight as we can for as long as we can."

February 19, 2004 - FPGA Tools Market Stalled - Electronic News -

The market for FPGA tools from EDA vendors remains stuck in neutral, despite the growing interest of chip designers in programmable chips. With the price of ASIC chips headed into the stratosphere, particularly at 90nm and beyond, companies like Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. have been turning in record profits. But so far the same trend hasn't carried over to the design tools market for FPGA chips, according to those here at the Design, Automation and Test Europe Conference.

February 19, 2004 - Package extends the capabilities of development tools - EDN -

Impulse Accelerated Technologies has released the CoDeveloper C-language-design tool for programmable platforms based on the Altera (www.altera.com) Nios and Xilinx (www.xilinx.com) MicroBlaze embedded processors. The product complements Altera’s Quartus II and SOPC Builder products for the Nios processor and Xilinx Platform Studio tool for the MicroBlaze processor. The CoDeveloper hardware/software- design tool allows engineers to use C to develop applications for FPGA devices. CoDeveloper includes compiler tools that provide the necessary C-to-RTL compilation path, as well as automated generation of interfaces for the MicroBlaze or the Nios processors. The tool allows engineers to use Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) Visual Studio, Metrowerks (www.metrowerks.com) CodeWarrior, or other GCC (Gnu Compiler Collection)-based tools when performing simulations and debugging.

February 19, 2004 - Xilinx delivers Advanced Switching core - EE Times -

Programmable logic vendor Xilinx Inc. said it is ready to start selling an intellectual property core that will run the Advanced Switching standard on its high-end FPGAs. The move is intended to give network engineers their first glimpse of how the nascent backplane interconnect standard performs in silicon. This week, Xilinx demonstrated how the IP core can be used to create a protocol bridge and to run an ATM software application in conjunction with Intel's network processors. The demonstrations were held at the Intel Developer Forum (Feb. 17-19) in San Francisco, according to Xilinx.

February 16, 2004 - Xilinx demos programmable line card for ATCA - EE Times -

Xilinx Inc. will demonstrate a programmable line card for Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture applications-the first such line card to meet the PICMG 3.0 spec. At the Intel Developer Forum this week, the company will show the first port of PCI Express Advanced Switching (PICMG 3.4) software to the board, which will be offered by Xilinx through Avnet distribution channels. Mike Nelson, senior manager for strategic solutions at Xilinx, said the ATCA card will help jump-start open standards in telecom switching for more venues than just PCI Express AS. Xilinx offers a crossbar-switch IP suite, used in linking ATCA to legacy time-division multiplexed switches and buses. The company also will show the first fruits of its full-mesh switching IP suite, announced last fall at the Programmable World 2003 show as the MTX (Mesh Technology on Xilinx) program.

February 11, 2004 - 90nm is Factory-Bound - Electronics Weekly -

After many trials and delays 90nm manufacturing is finally emerging from the laboratories into the factories. At the Globalpress Summit 2004 in Monterey, Calif., a number of companies revealed that they had achieved production runs in very limited quantities of commercial products on 90nm processes. "We've qualified 90nm for full production for a wireless customer," said Julie England, VP and general manager of the Sun Microsystems business at Texas Instruments. TI is running somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 90nm wafers a month. Xilinx is also on the 1,000 to 5,000 wafers level, having started running 90nm wafers at UMC in January 2003 and achieved its first 90nm production qualified parts in January 2004. "We've got production-ready parts now and the first products on 90nm are two Spartan chips, one with 200,000 system gates and one with 400,000 gates," sa id Wim Roelandts, CEO of Xilinx.

February 11, 2004 - Supply Chain Better? - Electronic News

Some top executives say they've worked out the supply chain speed bumps by getting closer to their customers. Others say the industry is fated to go through up and down cycles forever. It might be a case of different markets and different viewpoints, but in this case many of them work together. Wim Roelandts, president and CEO of Xilinx, said that his company has been talking extensively with its customers. "We ask them how much inventory do you need," said Roelandts. "We have more contacts with customers."

February 9, 2004 - A Failure to Communicate? Not for PLDs - Electronic News -

When the wired communications market was in a state of freefall, the programmable logic device (PLD) suppliers couldn't seem to distance themselves from it quickly enough. But now that the network equipment segment is finally on the road to recovery, and is fueling improved financial results at PLD makers, the programmable logic suppliers now must be feeling a strong sense of relief that they did not completely wean themselves from wired communications. After declines of 19.8 percent and 15 percent in 2002 and 2003 respectively, wired communications factory revenues will rebound by 7.5 percent in 2004, iSuppli predicts. Industry giants Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp. both posted gains in the fourth quarter while Xilinx reported extraordinarily strong results, all because of the resurgence in the communications sector that started in late 2003.

February 3, 2004 - US Chip Co Xilinx Sets Up Asia Headquarters In Singapore - Dow Jones Newswire via Wall Street Journal (sercure Site)

U.S. chip maker Xilinx Inc. (XLNX) Tuesday said it will set up its Asian headquarters in Singapore, creating about 200 jobs here over the next six years. Xilinx, which develops programmable chips, said the move would enable it to be closer to its manufacturing partners in Asia like United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) of Taiwan, as well as its customers. It will also make Singapore the "third major leg" of the company, where California is a base for its U.S. operations and Dublin for its European markets, said Stacy Fender, Xilinx Asia Pacific General Manager, the sole person in Singapore currently.

February 3, 2004 - Wall Street Se

February 3, 2004 - Wall Street Set to Open Flat - Reuters

Wall Street was set to open flat on Tuesday with earnings from technology bellwether Cisco Systems (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) heading a slowly dwindling results line-up, while the dollar was in sour mood. Cisco, the world's biggest maker of gear that directs Internet traffic, reports after the close. Elsewhere in the technology sector, Goldman Sachs investment bank cut its recommendation on the semiconductor capital equipment sector to "neutral" from "attractive." XILINX BULLISH Xilinx Inc (XLNX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's largest maker of programmable microchips, said on Tuesday it expected its sales for the year to March 2005 to beat the semiconductor industry's growth rate. Xilinx Chief Financial Officer Kris Chellam told Reuters in an interview Xilinx's growth would be driven by corporations upgrading data networks and by telecom carriers boosting capacity, particularly for third-generation mobile technology.

February 3, 2004 - 2-Xilinx sees strong sales in 04/05 - Reuters

Xilinx Inc (XLNX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's largest maker of programmable microchips, said on Tuesday it expected its sales for the year to March 2005 to beat the semiconductor industry's growth rate. Xilinx Chief Financial Officer Kris Chellam told Reuters in an interview Xilinx's growth would be driven by corporations upgrading data networks and by telecom carriers boosting capacity, particularly for third-generation mobile technology.

February 3, 2004 - CEO Approval Ratings - Forbes

Our CEO approval ratings lets you vote on the job performance of the country's most prominent business leaders, from Jeffrey Bezos to Craig Barrett to Rupert Murdoch. We've tracked the monthly approval ratings of 50 prominent corporate honchos, and have added ten new ones from the Internet and semiconductor sectors. Bookmark this page and come back throughout the month to see how these bosses are faring. Plus, compare how they stacked up last month. Be sure to vote--but remember you can vote only once per month for each CEO. Xilinx CEO Willem Roelandts, is at the top with 75% approval rating in the Semiconductor section.

February 2004 - DUC And Enhanced FEC Arrive At The FPGA Core - Wireless Systems Design -

As major analysts predicted, FPGAs are continuing to expand into traditional ASIC and DSP markets. To take advantage of this growth, Xilinx is now offering a digital-upconverter (DUC) LogicCore module along with enhanced forward-error-correction (FEC) cores for digital communication-system design. This step extends the company's coverage from baseband-processing applications to signal generation for digital intermediate-frequency (IF) subsystems. Having these functions in one FPGA should give users greater flexibility in their wireless designs. The new DUC core is included with the Xilinx ISE software.

February 2004 - On the Wireless Front: Sensio and Xilinx, Inc. - Wireless Systems Design -

Sensio and Xilinx, Inc. are now collaborating on a breakthrough three-dimensional (3D) video-processing technology known as SENSIO 3D. Sensio credits Xilinx and its programmable-chip technology with enabling the creative design and economic viability of its SENSIO 3D Video Processing system. The SENSIO system works by transforming the conventional home theater into a 3D stereoscopic movie experience. It is said to rival the best theme-park experience. At its core are Xilinx's low-cost Spartan programmable chips. They provide the central processing capability.

January 28, 2004 - Major PLD Firms Push Low-priced ASICs In Domestic Market - The Electronic Times (Korea) (resticted site)

World heavyweight programmable logic device maker such as Altera and Xilinx are making a big push in the marketing of their new application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in the domestic market. These two firms, which represent three quarters of the word programmable logic devices (PLD) market, will launch in the domestic market new upgraded products with competitive prices, employing 90nm-circuit width processing technology.

January 22, 2004 - Xilinx, Altera shares jump on bullish outlook - Reuters -

Three top producers of programmable microchips showed big gains on Thursday after earnings by Xilinx Inc. (XLNX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) demonstrated that demand for chips that can be tailored by users was healthy and improving. Altera Corp. (ALTR.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , Lattice Semiconductor Corp. (LSCC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , and Xilinx were the top performers on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange semiconductor index on Thursday morning (.SOXX: Quote, Profile, Research) . Xilinx, the hottest of the three, rose 12 percent.

January 22, 2004 - Banc of America Ups Xilinx to 'Buy' - BusinessWeek -

Analyst Sumit Dhanda says the company is the prime beneficiary of an improving environment for enterprise and carrier spending. He says Xilinx is the best-positioned company in his Analog/programmable logic devices universe to capitalize on a recovery. Dhanda says Xilinx could potentially continue to raise its earnings estimates as demand trends within the communications market continue to improve. He says the 20 cents third-quarter pro forma earnings per share, and the 16% sequential sales growth beat his 18 cents and 8% estimates, respectively.

January 22, 2004 - Chip Makers Post Mixed Results - Silicon Strategies -

Xilinx Inc., Cirrus Logic Inc., MIPS Technologies Inc., SanDisk Corp. and Zarlink Semiconductor Inc. separately reported their financial results on Wednesday (Jan. 21), with positive-to-mixed results for the quarter. Xilinx announced results for the third quarter of fiscal 2004 with revenues of $365.6 million and a net income of $69.4 million, or $0.19 per diluted share, including a $3.4 million building impairment charge.

January 22, 2004 - The tale of the tape so far -- 38 chip companies report higher than expected aggregate sales for Q4 - The Semiconductor Reporter (secure server)-

NEW YORK -- In the semiconductor equipment sector, the big story coming out of the financial reports is the spectacular take-off in bookings -- which, of course, will not translate into revenue until one, two, or even three quarters pass, while tools are delivered, qualified, and accepted. Today's major example is KLA-Tencor, which said its orders exploded 50% in the quarter (see today's story). Twenty fabless chip companies have reported so far: Actel, ATI, Cirrus Logic, Exar, Genesis Microchip, Hifn, Integrated Circuit Systems, ISSI, Micro Linear, PLX Technology, PMC-Sierra, Power Integrations, Qlogic, Qualcomm, SST, Standard Microsystems, TranSwitch, Trident Microsystems, Xicor, and Xilinx.

January 21, 2004 - Xilinx Programs Higher Revenues - Electronic News -

Programmable logic chipmaker, Xilinx Inc. saw strength across all products, geographies and end markets, driving revenues higher 16 percent sequentially for its fiscal Q3. The San Jose-based company saw net income of $69.4 million or 19 cents per share on revenues of $365.6 million in the December quarter. That compares with net income of $56.4 million or 16 cents per share on revenues of $315.5 million in fiscal Q2.

January 21, 2004 - Xilinx Called 'Best Positioned' In Its Sector - Forbes -

Xilinx (nasdaq: XLNX - news - people ) stock got a boost from a Banc of America upgrade to a "buy" from a "neutral" rating. The research house also lifted its price target for the stock to $50 from $28. It described the provider of programmable logic solutions as "a prime beneficiary of an improving environment for enterprise and carrier spending." Banc of America also said Xilinx is the "best positioned" of the companies it covers in its sector to capitalize on that recovery. Yesterday Xilinx reported a year-over-year third-quarter revenue increase of 29% to $365.6 million, citing economic recovery and a jump in sales into the communications industry. The stock, which Wednesday closed at $40.39, was up $3.17 at $43.56.

January 21, 2004 - Xilinx revenues rise 16% sequentially on increased telecom and networking business - The Semiconductor Reporter (secure server)-

Xilinx Inc. said today that sales growth in its third fiscal quarter ended Jan. 4 were better than expected, driven by broad-based strength across all products, geographies, and end markets. Revenues were up 16% sequentially and 29% on-year to $365.6 million

January 21, 2004 - Xilinx posts profit as telecoms business improves - Forbes via Reuters -

Xilinx Inc. (nasdaq: XLNX - news - people), a producer of programmable microchips used in a variety of electronics, on Wednesday reported a quarterly profit from a year-earlier loss, driven by the economic recovery and a jump in sales into the communications industry. The San Jose, California-based company said revenue rose 29 percent to $365.6 million, well above Wall Street analyst expectations, and predicted higher revenue in the current quarter. [read more]

January 21, 2004 - After the Bell-Netflix, Xilinx jump after earnings
- Reuters via Forbes -

In NEW YORK story headlined "After the Bell-Netflix, Xilinx jump after earnings," please read in paragraph 5 "Web auctioneer eBay Inc. (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people) shares jumped ... its quarterly earnings rose nearly 64 percent ... " instead of " ... quarterly earnings rose nearly 40 percent ... " (corrects percentage growth figure in eBay profit). A corrected repetition follows. (Updates prices, adds Netflix, Xilinx)

January 19, 2004 - DSP Design Platform For FPGAs Sports JTAG Link - Electronic Design -

Designers looking to reduce overall simulation time when using the MathWorks' Simulink can opt for the latest version of System Generator for DSP (v6.1). This latest generation from Xilinx lets DSP designers link their custom boards via a generic JTAG interface. Thanks to easy access to Xilinx's ChipScope Pro tool, it's also possible to perform real-time signal capture for debugging at system speeds. An upcoming enhanced version of the company's Xtreme DSP development kit supports hardware cosimulation using the new version of System Generator for DSP as well. [read more]

January 16, 2004 - Chipmakers Circuits are Humming - BusinessWeek (secure server) -

Through mid-January, the semiconductor industry has enjoyed a bullish earnings reporting season. The world's largest chipmaker, Intel (INTC ; ranked 5 S&P STARS, or buy; recent price: $33), reported a quarterly record in revenues of $8.74 billion for the three months ended December. "Ongoing strength in emerging markets, coupled with improving demand in established markets," drove revenue growth, says Intel. Put another way, Asia is back to boom-time performance after the SARS slowdown in spring, 2003, and the U.S. economy is beginning to rev up again based on low interest rates and tax cuts, among other things. This is a general industry article. Please NOTE: This article was release prior to Xilinx's earnings announcement.

January 16, 2004 - Innovation to drive chip performance curve - EETimes -

When a guy like Bernard S. Meyerson, chief technology officer of IBM Microelectronics, tells a roomful of Taiwanese designers and process engineers that traditional CMOS scaling is dead, they take it in stride. "There is paradigm shift here, and it is a very important one, "Meyerson said at the Semico Impact Conference here recently. "The diminishing returns you get from scaling mean that innovation - the harder thing - actually has to happen faster and faster just to stay on the expected performance line. And scheduling innovation is something that makes engineers very nervous." Ivo Bolsens, chief technology officer of Xilinx Inc is quoted in this article.

January 15, 2004 - EA, Intuit, Xilinx boost SVI - The Argus -

An index of Silicon Valley stocks rose, led by Electronic Arts Inc., Intuit Inc., and Xilinx Inc. as all three major stock indexes climbed. The Bloomberg Silicon Valley Index rose 0.78 to 493.81. Declining stocks led those that advanced 17 to 15, with two unchanged. The index has climbed 46 percent in the past year. Xilinx, the San Jose-based maker of programmable semiconductors, rose 91 cents to $40.92.

January 13, 2004 - Three Picks in the Semiconductor Sector - Forbes -

J.P. Morgan says it expects "positive news" during earnings season from the semiconductor sector, saying it believes "order rates remain strong in the wireline and consumer end markets, along with large-scale increases in memory pricing." The research firm said its top picks remain Xilinx (nasdaq: XLNX - news - people ), Microchip Technology (nasdaq: MCHP - news - people ) and Lattice Semiconductor (nasdaq: LSCC - news - people ) for small-cap investors.

January 12, 2004 - FPGAs Absorb More System Logic - Elctronic Design -

Gains made in density and performance are pushing FPGAs into an ever more competitive position with custom-designed ASICs. On top of that, they're virtually going head-to-head with "platform" and "structured" ASICs. The demand for FPGAs remains strong as designers craft systems that both meet the latest standards and are adaptable if the standards should change. Actel Corp., Altera Corp., and Xilinx are discussed in this article.

January 12, 2004 - Xilinx FPGAs Make Music with Gibson MaGIC True-digital Guitar - Embedded Star -

January 12, 2004 - Xilinx Among "100 Best Companies To Work For" for 4th Straight Year - Embedded Star -

January 9, 2004 - CES Steals Comdex's Spotlight - Electronic News -

According to numerous industry executives and several overworked cab drivers on the Las Vegas Strip, the Consumer Electronics Show has become as big, if not
bigger, than Comdex was during its heyday. "I think [the crowds are] indicative of the economy and the industry," Robert Bielby, senior director of strategic solutions marketing at Xilinx, said. "The digital consumer sector's been one of the strongest sectors in the industry and has been what's really held up and kept the industry afloat." The logic company hired Bielby with a mission of diversification, he said. And Xilinx's diversificaiton toward CE has seriously paid off. According to the executive, the company recorded 144 percent revenue growth for a two-year period on CE products. Xilinx attributes 33 percent of its revenue to the CE business and was able to avoid layoffs during the downturn, in part, due to sector's strength. The company now finds itself in numerous CE products, including ones from Sharp and Sony, and today announced its technology in a line of Gibson electric guitars

January 9, 2004 - CES: New Place To Pitch Components - Electronic News -

Electronics component vendors began gaining marketing traction in the explosive consumer electronics world this week, joining hands with end-product vendors at the
Consumer Electronics Show. Xilinx trumpeted its Spartan-3 FPGA in Gibson's MaGIC digital guitar, which makes it far simpler to digitally record and edit music than converting it from analog to digital in a recording studio. Adding programmability into the chip is critical, in part because the market is so new and no one knows what will be needed. Robert Bielby, senior director of strategic solutions marketing at Xilinx, said programmable logic is gaining traction across the consumer electronics market. He said there are so many products and so many changes required that volumes often don't reach the level where it's economical anymore to develop ASICs.

January 9, 2004 - CES: Pick our Partners - Electronic News -

The number of electronics companies attending this year's consumer electronics show is huge. That may sound a bit like the reflexive property of business, but there's
more to it than meets the naked eye. Most electronics companies -- the ones that make the components rather than the finished products -- don't get much notice unless you crack open the latest gizmo and use a magnifying glass to look at the names on the boards. Plain and simple, they've got a branding problem. The more successful ones are pulling partners into their booths to tout their technical prowess. Transmeta, for example, had powerful microcomputers from Sharp and OQO. Xilinx teamed up with Gibson -- the guitar company that now owns Wurlitzer -- to pitch its programmable logic chips.

January 8, 2004 - Xilinx CTO: PLD market to drive sub-micron developments as ASICs veer from Moore's Law - DigiTimes.com -

Ivo Bolsens, vice president and CTO for Xilinx, shared his views about the programmable logic device (PLD) market during a recent interview with local media in Taipei

January 6, 2004 - UMC, He Jian share orders from Xilinx, Infineon - DigiTimes -

With its capacity fully occupied, UMC has transferred some orders from Xilinx and Infineon Technologies to its allied Chinese foundry He Jian Technology (Suzhou).
Infineon started volume production and shipments of its logic ICs with a 0.35-micron CMOS process at He Jian at the end of last year. Xilinx has also completed tape-out with 0.35- to 0.5-micron processes at the Chinese foundry, with volume production scheduled to begin in the first half of this year.

January 6, 2004 - UMC has passed orders to China's He Jian, says report - Silicon Strategies (resticted site)

Foundry chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp. has passed orders it has received from Xilinx Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG to Chinese foundry He Jian
Technology (Suzhou), according to a Digitimes report which refers to un-named sources. Infineon started volume production and shipments of logic ICs fabricated in a 0.35-micron CMOS manufacturing process at He Jian at the end of 2003, according to the report. Meanwhile Xilinx has completed chip tape-outs with 0.35- and 0.5-micron manufacturing processes at the Chinese foundry, with volume production scheduled to begin in the first half of 2004, the report said.

December 26, 2003 - Xilinx releases converter, FEC cores - CommsDesign.com -

Xilinx is making its field programmable gate array (FPGAs) in communication designs with the release today (Dec. 24) of a digital up converter (DUC) and enhanced forward error correction intellectual property (IP) cores. The DUC core is aimed at software-defined radio, digital transmitter, cable modem, and wireless base station designs. The core supports between 5 to 5792 interpolation rates, a local oscillator spurious free dynamic range of 115 dB, and the ability to select filter
lengths between 4 and 1024 taps. On the FEC front, Xilinx has enhanced its error correction core products so they support variable block lengths and deliver
multi-channel functionality. The company has also enhanced its interleaver core so it supports selectable configurations on the fly. All of the cores are available now. The DUC is included with the latest version of Xilinx' CORE generator system. The FEC cores are available as separately licensed parameterized netlists.

December 22, 2003 - Xilinx announces interoperability with IBM SerDes technology - Lightwave -

Xilinx today announced successful interoperability testing of the IBM high speed SerDes (serial/deserializer) core with Xilinx's Virtex-II Pro 3.125 serial transceivers. With Xilinx field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and IBM ASICs often on
the same boards, the interoperability testing significantly reduces overall product time-to-market by allowing customers to focus on design issues rather than verifying electrical compliance. Applications now enabled include high speed interface requirements for Fibre Channel, PCI Express, Serial Rapid I/O, Serial ATA, Serial Attached SCSI, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and Optical Internetworking
Forum (OIF) interfaces.

December 18, 2003 - U.K. Design House Develops LIN Core for Xilinx - Electronics Weekly -

U.K. design house Intelliga Integrated Design has developed a Local Interconnect Network (LIN) core for Xilinx's Spartan, Virtex and CoolRunner FPGAs. The company said the core takes up just 3 percent of a million gate Spartan3, a device that
will cost $12 in volume next year, according to Xilinx.

December 18, 2003 - Modular FPGA Architecture Spawns Multiple Silicon Optimizations - Electronic Design -

Though FPGA designers have tried to keep FPGAs as generic as possible, Xilinx feels it's time to craft FPGAs that are more in tune to specific market segments. To do this, its next-generation Virtex FPGAs use a highly modularized architecture called the application-specific modular block (ASMBL).

December 17, 2003 - Xilinx claims new design tool makes Virtex-II Pro FPGAs 38% faster than competing parts - The Semiconductor Reporter -

Xilinx Inc. today said new performance numbers for its leading-edge Virtex-II Pro family of field programmable gate arrays show designs implemented with the ISE 6.1i version of design tools using Synplicity v7.3 Synplify software are 38% faster than the nearest competing FPGAs. The company also said design compile times are up to two times faster than competitive offerings and provides customers with the advantage of over two additional speed grades for FPGA-based applications.

November/December 2003 - On The Wireless Front - Wireless Systems Design -

Xilinx, Inc.'s investment in the industry' most advanced 90-nm and 300-mm chip-making technology is already paying off for customers. Most recently, the company
achieved new breakthrough price points for what's claimed to be the world's first 90-nm family of programmable chips. Those chips have been shipping since March of this year. Xilinx is now offering Spartan-3 FPGAs with one million system gates for an unprecedented $12.00 along with three different Spartan-3 FPGAs for under $7.00. Spartan-3 platform devices range from 50,000 to 5 million system gates with prices starting at $2.95. This represents a cost savings of up to 80% over competitive offerings.