Xilinx Introduces Breakthrough Cost Reduction Technology For Virtex-II FPGA Family
Virtex-II EasyPath Solution, Industry's Best Approach For Total Cost Management, Provides Fast Seamless, No-Risk Alternative To FPGA Conversion
SAN JOSE, CA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Mar 25, 2002 -- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), the leader in programmable
logic solutions, announced today the Virtex-II(TM) EasyPath(TM)
family. The Virtex-II EasyPath solution, an extension of
the highly successful Virtex-II series, provides a cost-reduction
vehicle for a customer's Virtex-II FPGA design without requiring
any additional customer resource implementation. Using the
Xilinx(R) Virtex-II EasyPath family, designers of today's
complex systems can not only continue to build in Virtex-II
FPGAs as the critical element of their systems, but also
take that flexibility into production with a Virtex-II EasyPath
solution at a cost savings of up to 80 percent over using
standard Virtex-II FPGAs. Moreover, Xilinx can deliver the
Virtex-II EasyPath solution as a guaranteed performance
match to the Virtex-II FPGA in about a fifth the time of
competing conversion solution alternatives.
Industry-wide success of the Virtex-II series
"Xilinx Virtex-II platform FPGAs provided an excellent system
design platform for creating our new Dual High Definition,
Dual Standard Definition, and ATSC-DVB I/O cards for our
MediaStream Servers," said Matt Klein, MediaStream Server
system architect for Pinnacle Systems (Mountain View, Calif.),
a manufacturer of Emmy award-winning digital video creation,
storage, streaming and viewing solutions for broadcasters,
video professionals and consumers. "The flexibility, ease
of reconfiguration, and high performance architecture of
Xilinx FPGAs allowed us to address multiple applications
in a single device and provided a critical time to market
advantage."
Customer-driven development process
For applications in rapidly changing markets, many customers
choose to use FPGAs in production and gain all the flexibility
and advantages they offer. For some applications where the
design can be fixed, a focus on lower cost in production
becomes important. Until now the transition from programmability
in the development phase to profitability in the production
phase involved high risk and valuable engineering resources.
To address growing customer demand for an alternative solution,
Xilinx developed the Virtex-II EasyPath family, the only
solution in the industry to take advantage of programmability
in the design phase through to a risk-free path to production
involving no customer engineering resources.
"This solution has been met with overwhelmingly positive
feedback from our major customers. This value-based solution
for Virtex-II designs gives our customers the best approach
to total cost management," said Rich Sevcik, Xilinx senior
vice president of FPGA Products. "Customers can reap the
immediate cost savings benefits of the Virtex-II EasyPath
solution with absolutely no engineering resource allocation,
and without risk."
Innovative solution with 100 percent match to the performance
and functionality—guaranteed
The Virtex-II EasyPath devices are standard Virtex-II FPGA
circuits that are verified to meet the requirements of a
specific customer application. Xilinx has created an innovative
test methodology that leverages the re-programmability of
FPGAs to isolate and test all resources required of a specific
design, based on data generated by Xilinx implementation
tools. Xilinx then creates a set of configuration patterns
and test vectors that are combined into a custom test program
that validates the functionality of all resources required
by a specific customer design.
The result is an application specific device that functions
and performs identically to an FPGA for the specific application.
Because the Virtex-II EasyPath device implements the specific
application in the exact same circuit as an FPGA device,
a 100 percent match to the performance and functionality
is guaranteed, and no board or system re-verification or
re-qualification is necessary. Because a custom test program
is produced, without new custom silicon or a new verification
process, production parts are available in weeks versus
months.
Pricing and availability
Virtex-II EasyPath solutions are available today for the
four largest devices in the Virtex-II family. Because these
devices do not require any custom silicon design, Xilinx
plans to offer this solution for future FPGA families. The
test process used for Virtex-II EasyPath solutions is easily
portable to new silicon families and will be used for all
high-density FPGAs from Xilinx in the future. 2004 high-volume
pricing (15, 000 units) for the Virtex-II EasyPath solution
for the XC2V3000(TM) is less than $200.
About Xilinx
Xilinx is the leading supplier of complete programmable
logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits,
software design tools, predefined system functions delivered
as intellectual property cores, and unparalleled field engineering
support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose,
Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array
(FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for
these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to
reduce significantly the time required to develop products
for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking,
industrial control, instrumentation, aerospace, defense,
low-power portable and consumer markets. For more information,
visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.
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