New Line Of Automotive Devices Strengthens Xilinx Leadership Position

- Today at the Convergence 2004 Automotive Conference, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) announced the immediate availability of the Xilinx Automotive (XA ) Family, a new line of FPGA and CPLD solutions designed specifically to meet the strict requirements set by the automotive industry. Xilinx is already the leading PLD provider to the automotive market, with many programmable devices "on the road" in areas such as GPS, infotainment, communication, driver assistance and comfort applications. The new XA line is the only programmable logic line to meet the Automotive Electronics Council AEC-Q100 qualification flow, full support of the Automotive Industry's Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) provision, and compliance to the ISO-TS16949 specification, a key requirement for automotive customers worldwide.

Market analysts indicate that the worldwide market for semiconductors for in-car audio, infotainment and driver information/telematics systems is forecasted to more than double from $5.6 billion in 2003 to $12.8 billion in 2010. According to Frank Visquez, director of Automotive Technologies at ABI Research, the FPGA/CPLD revenue portion of this segment is expected to grow 94 percent from $240.3 million to $449.3 million.

"As the leading PLD provider to the automotive market for several years, we have continued to provide the time-to-market and design flexibility benefits inherent to our programmable solutions. By combining these traditional benefits with full compliance to industry standards, Xilinx is positioned to attain an even larger portion of the available market," said Mustafa Veziroglu, general manager of the Market-Specific Products Division at Xilinx. "The XA family will serve as a catalyst to exploit reconfigurable technologies that will ultimately drive new technologies and applications in the automobile."

Today's announcement represents a major commitment by Xilinx to continue its leadership role in this rapidly growing market. Consistent with the company's commitment to the automotive market, Xilinx recently established a product division staffed with industry veterans dedicated to understanding and delivering to the stringent quality and delivery requirements of the automotive market. Xilinx also helps drive automotive device quality as an active member of the Automotive Electronics Council, the steering committee who defined the AEC-Q100 standard.

The XA line consists of both FPGA and CPLD devices, providing significant flexibility for automotive device designers. The FPGA devices are available in densities ranging from 50,000 to 1,000,000 system gates in a variety of packages and the CPLD devices range in density from 32 to 256 macrocells with I/O ranging from 33 to 184. Xilinx XA devices operate over the extended temperate range with both Q-Grade (-40oC to +125oC) and I-Grade (-40oC to +100oC) devices. The XA product line is complimented by a suite of intellectual property (IP) optimized for the automotive market, including communications and connectivity cores, such as Controller Area Network (CAN) and Local Interconnect Network (LIN) IP cores provided by Xilinx AllianceCORE partners, as well as a variety of reference designs.

Pricing and Availability
All XA devices are currently sampling. The XA series Spartan-3 FPGAs start at under $4.50 for 50K system gates, while the CoolRunner-II CPLDs start at under $1.25 for 32 Macrocells for production volumes of 25KU/year starting in first half of 2005. Volume production quantities of AEC-Q100 automotive qualified XA devices will be available beginning in the first quarter of 2005 starting with Spartan-IIE and select Spartan-3 devices. The remaining Spartan-3 FPGA and Flash PROM devices will be available in production quantities in the second quarter 2005, followed by the CoolRunner-II CPLD and 9500XL XA devices in the third quarter of 2005. Visit www.xilinx.com/automotive for additional information on pricing and availability.

Online Design Resource
The Xilinx eSP web portal dedicated specifically to the design and development of automotive applications provides a comprehensive resource for system designers, delivering a powerful array of solutions and information in a single location. For more information visit www.xilinx.com/esp/automotive.

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