Jointly developed designs enable easy migration from legacy PC bus architectures to PCI Express high-speed interface
EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands and SAN JOSE, Calif., - September 20, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced plans to cooperate in the design of semiconductor hardware and intellectual property related to the PCI Express interface. The collaboration is expected to result in PCI Express solutions that help current and prospective customers easily migrate from legacy PC bus architectures to the new, simplified PCI Express high-speed interface architecture. The move to PCI Express by consumer product manufacturers will ultimately benefit consumers, offering fast and easy transfer of video and graphics from PCs to home theatre equipment.
"Our customers are looking for an easy migration path from current bus architectures to the high-speed capabilities of PCI Express. We are pleased to work closely with Philips, a clear leader in PCI Express PHY devices to bring about such a solution," said Mark Aaldering, vice president of IP Solutions and the Embedded Processing Division at Xilinx. "By working closely with Philips, we hope to bring the benefits of programmability and PCI Express to an even broader audience - to run premium movies and sound on PCs and other emerging consumer electronics systems and products."
"Xilinx has an outstanding track record with its work related to PCI technology, and its Spartan family of low-cost FPGAs provide a broad customer base with a great deal of flexibility for the design of PCs, peripherals, consumer-oriented electronics products and other systems benefiting from the performance and elegance of PCI Express," said Frank Caris, general manager of Emerging Products, Philips Semiconductors. "We look forward to working together to bring new possibilities for simplified, fast connections within the Connected Home as well as a multitude of other peripheral and embedded applications."
Based on Xilinx 90nm Spartan-3 FPGAs and Philips PCI Express PHY devices, the solution provides maximum flexibility benefits addressing a wide variety of applications across many volume ranges. PCI Express is the successor to Intel's PCI and PCI-X architectures used in PCs throughout the world, offering scalable bandwidth from 2.5 to 80 Gbps and advanced features to meet the Input/Output needs of next generation systems. Its layered architecture allows future add-ons for connections to copper, optical and other emerging physical signaling media. Ideal for making the transition from legacy interfaces to PCI Express, the solution supports eXPIPE interfaces between the physical and logical layers.
The PCI Express bus interface offers a number of inherent improvements beyond the pure speed play. It is a two-wire connection replacing current 16- or 32-wire bus connections. It also puts out less electro magnetic interference (EMI), in addition to requiring fewer layers on the printed circuit board, thereby reducing manufacturing and material costs.
Philips and Xilinx expect to have further announcements related to PCI Express technology activities in early 2005.
About Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs
The Xilinx Spartan-3 family is the only 90nm FPGA family in production and is the world's lowest-cost FPGA, offering unrivaled price points with more density and performance features than any other device in its class. Xilinx Spartan Series FPGAs can be found in a wide number of consumer electronic devices throughout the world today.
About Philips PHY Devices
Philips is a leader in wired and wireless PHY solutions in a range of semiconductor connectivity products including USB, wireless local area network and personal area network devices. The PCI Express PHY is designed for high-performance physical layer devices. It is an easy-to-use, low-power solution with excellent timing characteristics.
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of $32.8 billion (EUR 29 billion) in 2003. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 165,600 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and one-chip TV products. News from Philips is located at www.semiconductors.philips.com.
About Xilinx Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit
www.xilinx.com.
