Xilinx and Crossbow Technologies Announces Parallel Processing Fabric IP for Programmable System Design

2D-fabric provides glueless interface to Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor, embedded Virtex-II Pro IBM PowerPC processors, and IBM CoreConnect bus

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 16, 2002 - Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) and CrossBow Technologies Inc., a new Xilinx AllianceCOREI™ program member, today announced the immediate availability of CrossBow's 2D-fabric 402c multiprocessing core for providing inside-chip and chip-to-chip communications for multiprocessor programmable systems using Xilinx Virtex-II™ and Spartan™ Series FPGAs. Target applications for this core include networking, telecommunications, voice over packet gateways, wireless basestations, data communications, and other embedded systems. For more information about this core and Xilinx embedded solutions, visit www.xilinx.com/ipcenter.

With this new solution, customers can:

• Directly connect up to 256 processors or subsystem blocks;
• Partition, integrate, and verify large Virtex-II Pro device designs;
• Map systems into arrays of low-cost Spartan-II devices for cost sensitive applications;
• Mix and match small and large processors to better tune performance;
• Re-partition systems late in the design cycle; and
• Remove dependencies between system components.

"We are excited to offer the industry's most comprehensive and easiest to use inter-processor communications fabric," said CrossBow's CEO Peter Galicki. "The 2D-fabric eliminates system communication bottlenecks and routing congestion through a 2-dimensional mesh topology that distributes data routing logic over the entire design area. It also presents a simple memory-like interface to handle simultaneously occurring transfers in a strictly deterministic fashion to drastically streamline system integration and verification inside Xilinx FPGAs."

The 2D-fabric IP provides a uniform and scalable I/O structure for efficient integration of multiple data processing subsystems inside a single FPGA or distributed across multiple FPGAs. Designers can easily develop high-performance processor systems combining the CrossBow fabric with a combination of multiple PowerPC processors or MicroBlaze™ soft processors embedded into Xilinx FPGAs.

"Beyond traditional applications, parallel processing can be used inside high-end FPGAs to manage system complexity and data transfer latency," said Per Holmberg, worldwide marketing director for Programmable Systems at Xilinx. "The CrossBow 2D-fabric de-couples system parts so that each component can be developed and verified independently of other components, adding value in building programmable systems by reducing development time for customers."

In addition, CrossBow is shipping a hardware parallel processing demonstration system. The board features a 3x3 array of MicroBlaze subsystems connected with a mesh of horizontal and vertical data transport links. The board has nine Spartan-II FPGAs, each containing one MicroBlaze subsystem that includes the processor core, memory, 2D-fabric, and GPIO components tied together using the CoreConnect™ bus.

Availability
The 2D-fabric 402c core is available directly from CrossBow Technologies in Xilinx netlist format, with a license fee starting at $20,000. The evaluation board is also available now for additional cost. For more information, visit the Xilinx IP Center at www.xilinx.com/ipcenter or www.crossbowip.com. The core is available under the terms of the SignOnce IP License, the industry's first multi-vendor common license for FPGA-based IP. Visit www.xilinx.com/ipcenter/signonce for more information.

About CrossBow Technologies
CrossBow Technologies develops and supports inter-processor communication fabrics. Our cores enable efficient transfers of processing tasks, data and control events between multiple processors. CrossBow makes it easy to increase system performance by enabling multiple CPUs to process data in parallel. Our innovative 2-dimensional I/O topology removes signal routing congestion and data communication bottlenecks between components to enable true plug-and-play system integration.

About Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) is the worldwide leader of programmable logic and programmable system solutions. Additional information about Xilinx is available at www.xilinx.com.