Xilinx Collaborates With Xylon To Develop World's First Programmable Development Board For Automotive Infotainment

FPGA-powered board offers greater benefits to automotive customers

NUREMBERG , GERMANY , February 14, 2006 – At the Embedded World Exhibition and Conference today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world’s leading programmable logic supplier announced a collaboration with Xylon, supplier of logicBRICKS™ optimized IP cores, resulting in the world’s first programmable development board designed specifically for the automotive infotainment market. The logiCRAFT2 system, enabled by Xilinx Spartan™-3 FPGAs will be demonstrated at Embedded World February 14 – 18, in hall 12, stand 511.

Capable of driving up to three displays (one front navigation and two rear seat), the logiCRAFT2 system can simultaneously display different video streams on each screen. This capability is enabled by the gate-density, logic performance and high-bandwidth provided by the Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA family and the flexibility of the Xilinx MicroBlaze™ 32-bit soft processor. Potential video applications include game consoles, digital TVs, DVD players, and external cameras. The board supports a wide variety of video input and output standards including LVDS, CMOS, RGB digital and analogue, COG and CVBS. With a number of onboard PHYs selected for automotive interfacing, the board provides an ideal platform for evaluating the latest automotive and telematics IP cores.

Many automotive designs have limited success because they rely on ASSP devices that are prone to obsolescence. The Xilinx Spartan-3 family was selected for this project due to the high level of integration possible in the FPGA (up to 1.5 million gates) and the superior longevity of the Spartan-3 devices in the marketplace. The reconfigurable nature of Xilinx FPGAs allows designers to make changes up until the final stage of implementation, and the designs are easily migrated into future generations of products. This not only provides designers with more design flexibility, it also reduces total project cost over the life of the product.

“The demanding nature of the automotive industry means flexibility is now a key consideration,” said Kevin Tanaka, Worldwide Automotive Marketing and Product Planning manager at Xilinx. “Xilinx FPGA solutions present customers with the scope they need to alter designs and build in next-generation features as well as being cost effective.”

“Our goal is to provide an optimal automotive Spartan-3 centric demonstration and development platform – logiCRAFT2 is targeted to both OEMs and Tier 1 customers for either advanced development or product development groups,” said Davor Kovacec, Xylon CEO. “logiCRAFT2 demonstrates modularity on all levels: software, board, FPGA and IP core, which provides the customers with additional flexibility, faster development cycles, and lower development and production cost.”

Although aimed at the automotive infotainment sector, the FPGA-based design can be easily adapted to suit many display interface applications such as those used in the consumer, media and industrial fields. Because it is based on programmable logic, it’s a simple task to add features or capabilities to the logiCRAFT2 hardware with zero NRE costs. This type of flexibility is not possible with ASSP-based solutions.

The logiCRAFT2 system offers both Basic and Elite Packages. The Basic package contains the PCB, CD with user documentation, PCB schematics, logicBRICKS evaluation IP cores, the FPGA design and sample infotainment application software including a evaluation version of the used Graphic Library. The Elite package includes a complete infotainment development environment with two 800x480 rear seat displays, one 400x234 navigation COG display, a rear seat camera, infrared headphones, remote control, portable DVD player, Games Console MP3 player and loudspeakers.

Pricing and Availability
Available from March 2006 the price for the basic logiCRAFT2 package is listed at €1950 (Euro). Pricing for the Elite system is available by request only. To learn more about the logiCRAFT2 series or to order, please visit www.logicbricks.de. For pricing enquires please email sales@logicbricks.de

About Xilinx Spartan-3 Series FPGAs
In 1998, Xilinx ignited the low cost FPGA revolution with the introduction of the Spartan Series. The Spartan Series now represents over 24 percent of quarterly Xilinx sales, with over $1.3B in cumulative revenue - more than twice the nearest competitor. With the recent introduction of its Spartan-3E family, Xilinx continues to add new market-specific features to its low cost Spartan Series while reducing the cost by 30X since its introduction, offering devices priced under $2*. For more information on the Spartan-3 and Spartan-3E FPGA families, visit www.xilinx.com/spartan.

About Xilinx MicroBlaze Processor
The Xilinx MicroBlaze solution is a scalable processor system that enables embedded developers to tune performance to match the requirements of target applications. Recently named to the Top 100 in 2005 by EDN magazine, the RISC “soft” processor core raises the bar for ease of use and flexibility with user-configurable hardware options. The MicroBlaze core is supported with a comprehensive ecosystem of embedded design tools, processor IP library, and development platforms. For more information on the MicroBlaze processor or to learn more about other Xilinx processing solutions, visit www.xilinx.com/processor .

About Xylon
Xylon is an independent design house focused on FPGA design developments to produce optimized IP cores, named logicBRICKS, interfaces and service that improve designer’s effectiveness and lower overall production costs. For more information, visit www.logicbricks.de.

About Xilinx
Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.

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