Avnet Design Services, Xilinx Announce Spartan-IIE FPGA Evaluation Kit

Features Xilinx MicroBlaze Soft Processor Core

PHOENIX & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 2, 2002--Avnet Design Services (ADS), the technical arm of Avnet Electronics Marketing, and Xilinx Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX - news), the leader in programmable logic, Thursday announced a new evaluation kit for Xilinx Spartan®-IIE FPGAs.

The evaluation kit is a demonstration platform that shows the capabilities of this new family of devices in embedded processing and digital convergence applications. The kit is used to evaluate various design approaches, and begin immediate development to help speed time to market.

Spartan-IIE Devices Target New Applications

This new combination of high capacity and low cost in a programmable logic device addresses a variety of new embedded, and digital convergence consumer applications. The availability of the efficient MicroBlaze(TM) soft processor core in the Spartan-IIE family provides additional processing power and system architecture previously missing in these applications areas.

"Evaluation kits are the quickest and easiest way for designers to learn about new products and technologies," said Warren Miller, vice president of marketing for Avnet Design Services.

"The Xilinx Spartan-IIE family is definitely a new technology many designers are going to want to evaluate for new designs. This kit gives the new user everything they need to evaluate the high capacity of this new low-cost family -- software, hardware, documentation and demonstration examples."

"Rapidly changing digital convergence applications in particular will benefit from the low cost and flexibility provided by a Spartan-IIE and MicroBlaze-based programmable solution," said Sandeep Vij, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Xilinx.

"Applications previously dominated by ASICs are rapidly moving to FPGAs. The new evaluation kit from Avnet Design Services will help designers speed development time and reduce overall time-to-market."

Kit Description

The Spartan-IIE evaluation kit contains a printed circuit board, complete design documentation, demonstration programs, and a board support package to simplify application development and features the Xilinx XC2S200E FPGA. The Spartan-IIE evaluation kit can be ordered from Avnet Design Services as part number ADS-XLX-SP2E-EVL and is priced at $249.

When combined with a MicroBlaze core license and Communications/Memory Module, the ordering part number is ADS-SP2E-MB-EVL and the price is $650. Delivery time for both kits is two weeks. For more information on this or other development kits from ADS visit www.ads.avnet.com.

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, 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.

About Avnet Design Services

Avnet Design Services is the technical arm of Avnet Electronics Marketing, providing a variety of technical resources and capabilities to speed customers' design cycles and to get their products to market quicker.

Field applications engineers (FAEs) are knowledgeable about a variety of potential applications solutions for customers' design problems and can guide engineers to the solution that is right for their particular applications. Fee-for-service engineering services, in FPGA, ASIC and System Design are offered to Avnet customers.

For more information, visit the Avnet Design Services Web site at http://www.ads.avnet.com.

About Avnet Electronics Marketing

Avnet Electronics Marketing (EM) is the largest operating group of Phoenix-based Avnet Inc. (NYSE: AVT - news), a Fortune 500 company with fiscal 2001 sales of $12.8 billion (year ended June 30, 2001).

One of the world's largest distributors of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components from leading manufacturers, Avnet EM markets, inventories and adds value to these products and provides world-class supply-chain management and engineering design services. Avnet EM serves customers in 63 countries. The company's Web site is located at http://www.avnet.com.

Other brands and names are the property of their respective owners.

     Avnet Design Services, Phoenix
     Bill Davies, 480/643-7845
      bill.davies@avnet.com
              or
     Xilinx Inc., San Jose
     Tamara Snowden, 408/879-6146
      tamara.snowden@xilinx.com