Xilinx AcceleratesVirtex-4 FPGA Performance By An Additional 26% With New Xplorer Utility

July 11, 2005 -- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced the immediate availability of its Xplorer utility - an easy-to-use script developed to help designers benchmark and maximize the performance advantages of the company’s Virtex-4 ™ and Spartan-3 ™ FPGAs. When performance is the highest priority for the design, the Xplorer utility, used in conjunction with RTL level retiming with Xilinx ® ISE ™ software, provides an additional 26 percent performance improvement on average for Virtex-4 FPGA designs. These improvements can save designers a full speed-grade as compared to competing 90nm FPGAs. Visit www.xilinx.com/xplorer to download the utility at no charge.

Xilinx derived the 26 percent performance improvement results by conducting a benchmarking experiment on a suite of more than 50 customer designs. The Xplorer utility was also used with a suite of synthesizable RTL designs from OpenCores ( www.opencores.org).  The OpenCores results demonstrated that by using the Xplorer utility with RTL level retiming, Virtex-4 FPGAs offered a significant performance improvement over competing 90nm FPGAs for 85 percent of designs, with two designs operating at over 400 MHz. The results of the experiments are available for download as a whitepaper entitled “Synthesis and Implementation Strategies to Accelerate Design Performance”.

The Xplorer utility delivers optimal design results by employing smart constraining techniques and a variety of physical optimization strategies. Xplorer works with Xilinx ISE software suite to explore the right set of options to meet design constraints and maximize design performance. Designers interested in learning more about the Xplorer utility and maximizing FPGA design performance can attend a free web seminar scheduled for July 12, 2005. For complete seminar and registration information, visit: www.xilinx.com/virtex4. 

Seminar attendees will learn the following:

• Guidelines and practical insight to leverage the full capabilities of Virtex-4 FPGAs
• Proven design techniques and tool settings to maximize performance and streamline design flow
• Results of the benchmarking experiment highlighting Virtex-4 performance advantages

About Xilinx Virtex-4 Platform FPGAs
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. Manufactured using the world’s first triple-oxide 90nm CMOS technology with 11-layer metal interconnect, Virtex-4 devices represent a quantum leap in programmable device architecture, technology, and system design capabilities. With more than 100 technical innovations, the Virtex-4 family consists of 17 devices and three domain-optimized platforms; Virtex-4 LX FPGAs optimized for logic-intensive designs, Virtex-4 SX FPGAs optimized for high-performance signal processing, and Virtex-4 FX FPGAs optimized for high-speed serial connectivity and embedded processing. Devices are shipping now. For more information on the Virtex-4 product family, visit www.xilinx.com/virtex4.

About ISE
Xilinx ISE 7.1i supports all leading-edge Xilinx product families including the latest three platforms of Virtex-4 FPGAs, Spartan-3 Generation FPGAs, and CoolRunner-II CPLDs. All versions of ISE software packages support Windows 2000 and Windows XP and Linux Red Hat Enterprise 3.0. ISE Foundation also supports Solaris 2.8 and 2.9. All ISE configurations are immediately available with prices ranging from $695 to $2495, and free, downloadable ISE WebPACK 7.1i. New customers can access the ISE Evaluation package at www.xilinx.com/ise_eval/ for a 60-day version of ISE Foundation at no charge.

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