Xilinx SDAccel and SDNet Software Defined Development Environments Earn Lightwave Innovation Award Distinctions

Optical Networking Industry Recognizes Xilinx for Technical Excellence for Enabling Systems and Software Engineers to Leverage the Benefits of All Programmable Logic and SoCs

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 24, 2015 -- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced that its SDAccel™ and SDNet™ software defined development environments were each recognized in the 2015 Lightwave Innovation Awards Program for technical excellence. The Lightwave Innovation Awards program distinguishes the top products and solutions available within the optical networking industry as determined by an independent panel of third-party fiber optics experts.

The Xilinx SDAccel and SDNet environments were called out for outstanding technical achievement in the design tools category of the awards program. All products are evaluated and scored on a scale of one to five. Realizing a score of four or above means that the judges believe the product provides technical features and performance that deliver clear and substantial benefits. Each of the Xilinx products scored 4.5.

"Achieving a 4.5 score is a huge accomplishment, and Xilinx obviously delivered this year," said Tim Hermes, publisher of Lightwave. "Abstracting hardware complexity to enable software engineers to leverage the benefits of programmable technology is a critical element for system development and differentiated designs, and the judges have spoken - they feel both development environments are game-changers."

"Being cited by a set of experts in the area of networking is particularly gratifying, as these two environments were developed from the ground up for the programming requirements of systems and software engineers designing networking systems and accelerated data center applications," said Hemant Dhulla, vice president of wired and data center business at Xilinx. "We are very proud that these two offerings enable both easier adoption and accessibility of FPGAs by a much broader group of engineers, while expanding the possibilities for next generation system designs."

The Xilinx Software Defined Specification Environment for Networking (SDNet), was introduced in March 2014 as the first member of the Xilinx SDx family. It enables the easy creation of high performance packet processing systems by system design and software architects with high-level user defined specifications and compilation to highly optimized FPGAs.

The Xilinx SDAccel Software Defined Development Environment for Acceleration was announced in November of 2014 as the second member of the Xilinx SDx™ family. It enables system and software engineers to leverage FPGAs to create power-optimized, accelerated and reconfigurable compute environments for the data center. SDAccel brings together programming environments for OpenCL™, C, and C++, optimized compilation and dynamically reconfigurable accelerators under a common development environment. The 3^rd member of the Xilinx SDx family, SDSoC, was announced in early March 2015, enabling the broader embedded software and systems design community to leverage Zynq All Programmable SoCs and MPSoCs.

About SDx
SDx (www.xilinx.com/sdx) is a family of software defined development environments for systems and software engineers. SDx enables developers with little or no FPGA expertise to use high level programming languages to leverage the power of programmable hardware with industry standard processors, whether on a board or embedded in Zynq All Programmable SoCs and MPSoCs.

About LIGHTWAVE
For more than 30 years, Lightwave (www.lightwaveonline.com) has delivered trusted technical, application and business insights to senior-level decision makers for optical communications worldwide. Lightwave serves technology vendors, communications carriers and major enterprises with a complete and nuanced picture of the optical communications business environment. Lightwave is a valued information source for information related to FTTx, networking, equipment design, MSO optics, and test and measurement for corporate executives, department heads, project managers, network engineers and others making strategic decisions that are critical to the success of their businesses. Lightwave is a unit of PennWell Corporation.

About the 2015 Lightwave Innovation Awards
The 2015 Lightwave Innovation Awards review and recognize the industry's most unique products and solutions that help optical communications professionals worldwide drive improvements and innovation in optical technology. Executives from Huawei, Verizon, Coriant, ADVA Optical Networking, Oclaro, and JDSU were among the third-party judges for the 2015 Innovation Awards. Criteria used in the Innovation Awards rankings include, first and foremost, unique technology or application thereof, innovation, ease of use, efficiency, reliability and contribution to profitability.

About Xilinx
Xilinx is the world's leading provider of All Programmable FPGAs, SoCs and 3D ICs. These industry-leading devices are coupled with a next-generation design environment and IP to serve a broad range of customer needs, from programmable logic to programmable systems integration. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.