Xilinx First To 65nm With Next Generation Virtex FPGAs

New family poised to further propel FPGAs into $22B ASIC/ASSP market by delivering robust system-level solutions for high-performance DSP, embedded and  serial connectivity application domains

MONTEREY, Calif., - February 28, 2006 - At the Globalpress Summit 2006 today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic solutions and inventor of the FPGA, demonstrated first silicon of its new 65nm generation Virtex™ FPGA family, the world’s most widely adopted FPGA series with over $4 billion in cumulative sales.

“Xilinx has long been committed to providing our customers with best-in-class performance, capacity, power, and cost advantages - enabled through a combination of innovation and an aggressive drive to the next node,” said Wim Roelandts, chairman, president and CEO of Xilinx. “Our highly successful 90nm Virtex-4 family, introduced in 2004, is the industry’s first device based on triple-oxide technology, which uses three types of gate oxides for selectively optimizing performance, power, and operating voltage throughout the device. This level of innovation will continue with our next-generation 65nm devices.”

“Our dual-foundry strategy continues to pay dividends, with unsurpassed access to leading edge process technology and manufacturing prowess,” said Erich Goetting, vice president and general manager of the Advanced Products Division. “The 11-layer metal, CMOS triple-oxide II process technology ensures that our FPGAs continue to set the pace in density, performance and low power. With our move to nickel-silicide self aligned technology, and full low-k for all inter-metal dielectrics, the transition to 65nm brought significant benefits to all areas, especially performance and power. From a manufacturing standpoint, Toshiba and UMC combined can support 300mm/65nm wafer production in volumes exceeding 15,000 wafers per month.”

The Virtex Track Continues
Xilinx introduced the industry’s first Platform FPGA in the late 90s with the Virtex-II product family, which provided a fabric that enabled the immersion of hard IP. The next-generation Virtex-II PRO products took advantage of this technology by embedding the IBM PowerPC™ and multi-gigabit transceivers, which became a turning point for the high-speed serial, DSP, and embedded processor application space. With the Virtex-4 family, the concept of Platform FPGAs was taken to the next level through the introduction of the ASMBL architecture, enabling multiple platforms within a family optimized for logic, DSP and embedded processing application domains. With Xilinx EasyPath FPGAs, customers have a way to further cost reduce their system once the design is frozen.

Xilinx continues to build upon this formidable foundation with its next-generation Virtex platform, providing customers with a natural migration path for reuse of intellectual property and design knowledge at 65nm. Working in close partnership with hundreds of customers, Xilinx has designed the new family to address high-performance system requirements, while meeting design time and system cost targets.

“Increasing performance and lowering cost through advanced process technology has resulted in the expansion of FPGAs into new domains such as DSP, high-speed serial and embedded applications,” said Dr. Handel Jones, president of IBS, a leading market research firm. “Xilinx has a solid history of being early to market with leading-edge technology and continues that tradition with 65nm. This has certainly influenced their competitive advantage and substantial lead in the PLD market and will further propel their growth in the $22 billion dollar ASIC/ASSP market.”

Early Access Software Delivered
Select customers and partners have received early access software earlier this year to begin evaluation and design of the next-generation Virtex FPGAs. “ Mercury is advancing on several fronts with the next-generation Virtex FPGAs, using the early-access design tools,” said Craig Lund, Chief Technology Officer, Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. “The triple-win of process gain, structural evolution, and tool maturity is yielding impressive results, even at this early stage.”

“The capacity and performance of this family is amazing and we are very excited to offer immediate support to Xilinx early access customers in our Synplify line of products,” said Jeff Garrison, director of marketing for FPGA Products at Synplicity. “We feel the next generation Virtex opens the door for an even broader range of applications to take advantage of programmable logic .”

Availability
Xilinx has delivered software to beta customers through its early access program, with general availability in the second half of 2006. Contact a Xilinx sales representative for more information: www.xilinx.com/company/sales/sales_offices.htm.

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