Xilinx Announces Customer Shipments Of Virtex-4 FX60 FPGAs With Industry's First 622Mbps - 10.3125Gbps Serial Transceivers

CHICAGO, June 6 /PRNewswire/ -- At the SUPERCOMM communications conference today, Xilinx, Inc. announced initial customer shipments of its Virtex(TM)-4 FX60 90nm FPGAs with integrated 622Mbps - 10.3125Gbps serial transceivers, delivering better design margin and flexibility over any other competing high-speed serial I/O solution in the industry. Xilinx will demonstrate the high-speed capabilities of its Virtex-4 FX devices at this week's SUPERCOMM, June 7-9, booth #29046, McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago. Visit www.xilinx.com/virtex4 for characterization data and additional information.

Among the first customers to receive initial Virtex-4 FX60 devices is Spirent® Communications. Spirent Communications verified the Virtex-4 FX60 device performance and functionality using their patented SmartBits XAUI Extender Card. The Virtex-4 transceiver functionality was proven to be virtually flawless under the most challenging conditions. Spirent engineers tested a variety of worst-case data patterns specifically designed to produce the most difficult environments that ensures maximum interoperability with other 10GbE devices. Bit error rates, jitter, and noise margin were measured across the various patterns.

"We are extremely impressed by the capabilities of the Virtex-4 devices," said Mark Fishburn, vice president of technical strategy at Spirent Communications. "We have custom traffic patterns, learned from our years of 10GbE field experience, which the FX60 was able to handle flawlessly."

"The Spirent SmartBits XAUI Extender helped us assure the design goals of the FX60 prior to going to market" said Sandeep Vij, vice president of worldwide marketing at Xilinx. "This kind of forward testing assures our design and performance objectives are in place when our customers are ready to evaluate our products."

Xilinx designed Virtex-4 RocketIO transceivers with the goal of delivering ample high-end performance as well as the most design margin. For designs running at speeds lower than 10.3125Gbps, the designer is assured of higher bandwidth if required. This translates to lower device costs and reduced risk for the customer, allowing engineers to future-proof their product. With these advanced capabilities, Virtex-4 FX FPGAs are ideal for a wide range of high-speed serial applications such as servers, storage sub-systems, communication line cards and backplanes.

"The Virtex-4 provides system developers with a single-chip platform that can incorporate control processing (PowerPC), complex data processing (customizable DSPs or other processing engines), and high-speed I/O," said Steve Berry, president and principal analyst at Electronic Trend Publications. "As the only platform with I/O transceivers from 622 Mbps to over 10 Gbps, the Virtex-4 can easily support all current interconnect standards, as well as future interconnect standards for many years to come."

Xilinx Virtex-4 FX60 devices support all major serial standards including PCI Express, Serial RapidIO, Ethernet and Fibre Channel, enabling the design of multiple applications using the same device, thereby reducing total solution cost. Virtex-4 FX RocketIO transceivers provide advanced equalization features, such as 3-tap Transmit Pre-emphasis, Linear Receive Equalization, 6-tap Decision Feedback Equalization (DFE), and Integrated AC-coupling capacitor, to enhance signal integrity at all speeds over the most stringent channels, making designs easier to implement the first time.

SUPERCOMM 2005 demo details

Xilinx will demonstrate the high-speed serial capabilities of the Virtex-4 FX60 FPGA with 16 multi-gigabit serial transceivers (MGTs) at SUPERCOMM 2005. The demonstration will highlight multiple MGTs running at different speeds, 3.125G, 5G, 6.25G and 10.3125G, simultaneously over a variety of channels, including backplanes, cables and optics

Pricing and Availability

Virtex-4 FX20 and FX60 devices can be ordered today. Pricing for the Virtex-4 FX20 device with eight serial transceivers starts at $49.99 for 25ku volumes in December 2005. For more information on Virtex-4 FX devices visit www.xilinx.com/virtex4.

About Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs

With today's 90nm Virtex-4 multi-platform FPGA family, designers of logic, embedded processing, DSP, and high-speed serial applications can select from 17 devices and three domain-optimized platforms. 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. The Xilinx Virtex-4 FX platform is the world's only FPGA product line to integrate dual PowerPC embedded cores. Named 2004 Product of the Year by Electronic Products Magazine, Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs deliver more options, higher performance and lower power than any other FPGA family available today. Devices are shipping now. For more information on the Virtex-4 product family, visit www.xilinx.com/virtex4.

About Xilinx

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