Xilinx Ships New Virtex-4 FX12 FPGA

Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) , the world's leading supplier of programmable logic solutions and inventor of the FPGA, today announced delivery of its new FX12 FPGAs -- the first Virtex-4™ devices with embedded PowerPC™ processor.

Shipped last week, the FX12 is the fifth member of the Virtex-4 family, bringing the total number of Xilinx devices shipping on the 90-nanometer (nm) node to 13. Xilinx has now shipped 100x more FPGAs on 90nm compared to the nearest competitor and continues the Company's dominance of this leading-edge process node. With the shipment of the FX12, Xilinx has now delivered devices from all three Virtex-4 platforms: the logic-optimized LX platform, the DSP-optimized SX platform, and the embedded processing-optimized FX platform.

"Delivery of the FX12 marks a major milestone in FPGA development by providing unprecedented levels of performance and capability with ultra low power-consumption and cost," said Erich Goetting, vice president and general manager of the Advanced Products Division at Xilinx. "This unique combination builds on the tremendous momentum we have established with the Virtex-II Pro™ family and enables a host of new applications in a wide range of markets including automotive, communications, storage, medical as well as test and instrumentation."

Industry's Highest-Performance Embedded Processing

The Virtex-4 FX12 features a 32-bit embedded PowerPC processor running at up to 450 MHz and delivering over 700 Dhrystone MIPS -- providing a direct 3x performance advantage over processors in competing 90nm FPGAs. An innovative auxiliary processor controller unit allows the processor to execute custom instructions in the FPGA fabric. The APU controller enables FX devices to deliver an astounding 20x-performance increase over fixed-instruction approaches as demonstrated by a recent encryption/decryption design created by Xilinx Research Labs.

Lowest PowerPC Power Consumption

Consuming a mere 0.45 mW/MHz, the FX12 processor core provides the world's lowest PowerPC power consumption. This low power is complemented by the triple-oxide technology used throughout Virtex-4 devices -- reducing power to approximately half that of previous generation FPGAs. The low-power embedded PowerPC processor and triple-oxide technology combined reduce power to a fraction of that consumed by processors in competing 90 nm FPGAs.

Complete System Solution

Two, fully integrated UNH-certified 10/100/1000 Ethernet MACs further increase the Virtex-4 FX12's capability by enabling system communication and management functions, while saving up to 7,200 logic cells and further reducing power consumption. These include such critical functions as TCP/IP Offload Engines that require a full MAC plus TCP/IP stack.

Since Virtex-4 FX devices are fully backward compatible with the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family, the devices support easy design migration of both hardware and software. Xilinx Virtex-II Pro and Virtex-4 FX devices are the world's only FPGAs with embedded processors capable of running MontaVista Linux, QNX or Wind River VxWorks operating systems to further simplify system design and integration -- in addition to Express Logic ThreadX, Green Hills Integrity, Mentor Graphics ATI Nucleus, Micrium uC/OS-II and Mind eCOS.

Virtex-4 FX devices are fully supported by the Xilinx Platform Studio (XPS) solution, the advanced tool suite recently chosen as a finalist in the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) DesignVision Awards program. Virtex-4 FX designers access the XPS suite with the Embedded Development Kit v6.3i which includes over 60 state-of-the-art soft peripherals.

Driving PowerPC-based Embedded Processing

Developed in close collaboration with IBM, the Xilinx implementation of the PowerPC processor core in FX devices is the world's first shipping samples at 90nm and continues the PowerPC processor's increasing industry momentum. This momentum is represented by the PowerPC's widespread adoption in the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro family of FPGAs, as well as all three of the next generation gaming systems from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

Low Cost and Immediate Availability

The Virtex-4 FX12 is available now, with volume pricing starting at $29.99 for 50K units at the end of 2005. Several Virtex-4 FX hardware development platforms will also be available in the near future.

About Xilinx Virtex-4 Platform FPGAs

Enabled by the revolutionary ASMBL (Advanced Silicon Modular Block) architecture and advanced 90nm triple-oxide technology, Virtex-4 FPGAs deliver more options, higher performance and lower power than any other FPGA family available today. With more than 100 technical innovations, the Virtex-4 family consists of 17 devices and three domain-optimized platforms; Virtex-4 LX FPGAs optimized for logic-intensive designs, Virtex-4 SX FPGAs optimized for high-performance signal processing, and Virtex-4 FX FPGAs optimized for high-speed serial connectivity and embedded processing. A multi-platform approach makes it possible for customers to select the optimal mix of resources for their application to achieve the highest functionality and breakthrough performance at the lowest cost. Devices are shipping now. For more information on the Virtex-4 product family, visit www.xilinx.com/virtex4.