Xilinx Spartan Series is World's Most Popular Low Cost FPGA with a Record Six Million Devices Shipped in a Single Quarter

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Setting another FPGA industry record, Xilinx, Inc. today announced that more than six million Spartan Series FPGAs were shipped in the quarter ending September 2003. With these latest shipments, a total of more than 70 million Spartan Series devices have been shipped since Spartan's initial introduction in 1998, making it the highest volume FPGA family in history. Record breaking early customer acceptance of Spartan-3, the latest family in the series, indicates that Spartan Series FPGAs will continue to be the low cost, high volume FPGA leader.

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"With the Spartan Series and the new 90nm Spartan-3 family, Xilinx continues to provide extremely low cost FPGAs with unparalleled density and capability for high volume, low cost applications," said Clay Johnson, vice president and general manager of the General Products Division at Xilinx. "The overwhelming success of the Spartan Series is confirmation of the increasing acceptance of programmable logic for low cost applications traditionally served by ASICs. It also speaks to the continued success of Xilinx's focused diversification efforts."

Manufacturing and Process Technology Leadership Key to Spartan Success

The Spartan Series' success is due in large part to Xilinx's industry-leading implementation of process and manufacturing technologies. Xilinx first shipped the Spartan-3 family in March 2003 as the world's first and only FPGA utilizing 90nm process technology. Xilinx also leads the industry in production on cost-effective 300mm wafers. The combination of 90nm process technology on 300mm wafers results in almost five times more die per wafer than the 130nm/200mm combination, enabling the company to provide groundbreaking cost-density benefits to its customers. For example, Xilinx now offers Spartan-3 devices with 1 million system gates for under $12.00*, three different devices with up to 400,000 system gates for less than $6.50*, and ten different device-package combinations for under $10.00*.

Providing Customers with More Features for Less Cost

Today's low cost, high volume systems are also some of the most sophisticated. Consumer electronic applications in graphics, networking, and telecommunications require platform capabilities such as embedded processors, hardwired DSP functions, and support for numerous connectivity standards. To address these needs, Spartan-3 FPGAs offer density and features light years ahead of competing FPGAs to allow customers to reduce overall system costs through integration. Spartan-3 FPGAs offer a combination of highest embedded block and distributed RAM and up to 784 I/Os. Spartan-3 devices offer embedded XtremeDSP functionality with dedicated 18x18 multipliers and up to 330 billion multiply and accumulates (MACs) per second. Additionally, Spartan-3 devices support 23 different parallel I/O standards, including PCI 32/33 and PCI 64/33, as well as many popular parallel connectivity cores for telecommunications and networking.

Pricing & Availability

The XC3S50, XC3S200, and XC3S400 Spartan-3 devices with 50,000, 200,000, and 400,000 system gates respectively, all sell for less than $6.50*. The XC3S1000 Spartan-3 device with 1 million system gates sells for under $12.00*. The entire Spartan-3 family will be available in volume production in early 2004 from distributors worldwide, or direct from Xilinx at http://www.xilinx.com/company/sales/offices.htm .

About Xilinx

Xilinx, Inc. is the worldwide leader of programmable logic and programmable system solutions. Additional information about Xilinx is available at http://www.xilinx.com/.

*Based on pricing for 2004, 250K units

CONTACT: Jennifer Wright Van Every of Xilinx, Inc., +1-408-879-7727, or
Jennifer.vanevery@xilinx.com

Web site: http://www.xilinx.com/