Xilinx Reaffirms Commitment To Automotive Market With Introduction Of Spartan-3E And Virtex-4 XA Devices

Lowest cost per gate and highest performance in the industry increase company’s lead in $450 million automotive PLD market

October 3, 2005, PARIS – At the International Automotive Electronics Congress (IAEC) today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX ) announced the expansion of its market leading Xilinx® Automotive (XA) family of programmable logic devices (PLDs) to include its entire line of low-cost Spartan™-3E family and its high performance Virtex™-4 platform FPGA device. Automotive designers can now choose between the lowest cost per gate in the industry with the 90nm (nm) Spartan-3E family or the high-performance features of its 90nm Virtex-4 FX12 XA device.

Already the leading PLD provider to the automotive industry, Xilinx is the only PLD supplier to offer a full range of devices that meet the stringent requirements of the automotive industry including ISO TS16949 certification, AEC-Q100 qualification flow, and PPAP documentation process. Implementing the new low-cost Spartan-3E XA devices with MicroBlaze 32-bit soft processor solutions, or the high- performance Virtex-4 FX12 devices with embedded Power PCs, DSP multipliers, and Ethernet MAC blocks allows automotive engineers to meet their challenging design goals with complete confidence in component quality.

“As the market leader in programmable solutions for the automotive market, we must continually evolve our offerings for the dynamic and constantly-changing needs of designers in this segment. PLDs are ideal for this market because new and emerging functionality must be merged with legacy systems and a flexible architecture is necessary,” said Harvey Steele, director of the Automotive Product Line at Xilinx. “Xilinx now offers the most comprehensive set of certified options for automotive designers, providing maximum flexibility in balancing price, performance and functionality.”

Industry Drives Need for Programmability
According to IMS Research, the PLD TAM in the automotive market for in-car audio, infotainment and driver information/telematics is expected to reach $449.3 million by 2010. “Telematics and infotainment is forcing an industry rethink about the products and systems architected into a typical connected car,” said Jon Cropley, Senior Analyst at IMS Research, a leading market research firm located in London, England. “New requirements carried across from the consumer industry are forcing the need for flexible architectures that can cope with not only current applications but future and possible unknown features.”

Lowest Cost per Gate in the Industry
Ranging from 100K to 1.6M system gates, the Spartan-3E XA family delivers the lowest cost per system gate in the industry (1000 system gates for three cents). Spartan-3E XA devices also include a host of features tuned for the automotive market, including support for 18 common I/O standards including PCI, RSDS, and mini-LVDS as well as interfaces to commodity priced DDR memories. These built-in platform features reduce the need for other discrete devices, lowering overall system costs and simplifying design.

High-Performance Platform Features
The Virtex-4 FX12 XA devices are the industry’s first automotive PLD with an embedded PowerPC processor, DSP multipliers, and 10/100/1000 Ethernet MAC blocks, all of which are available as part of the breakthrough Virtex-4 ASMBL architecture. The enhanced PowerPC 32-bit RISC processor can run over 700 DMIPS at 450MHz and is perfect for high-performance embedded systems or complex control functions, and the Auxiliary Processor Unit (APU) Controller makes it easy to integrate hardware accelerators. The Ethernet MAC blocks in hard IP allows for high-speed uploads of new or updated software into the board, module, or system being designed. The 500MHz Xtreme DSP slices add to the raw processing power of the device, and all of these features offer not only high integration onto a single device, but blistering speed for routing and control functions in areas such as gateways.

Critical IP Support
Xilinx XA devices are further bolstered with industry-specific intellectual property (IP) featuring its newly-developed CAN (Controller Area Network) solution available in the wholly Xilinx-owned LogiCore™ library. The fully verified and standards compliant CAN LogiCore IP offering allows designers to quickly implement CANs in their programmable automotive solutions. This flexible approach allows design optimization for a variety of network-centric applications such as gateway, infotainment, driver assistance, and comfort and convenience functions. Designers also have access to a full suite of third-party IP support available through the Xilinx Alliance Partners Program that include LIN, CAN, IDB1394, USB and display controllers.

Pricing and Availability
All XA devices are currently sampling. The XA series Spartan-3 FPGAs with 100K system gates start at under $3.00 for 100K units in the second half of 2006. The XA series Virtex-4 FX12 devices start at under $40.00 for 100K units in the second half of 2006.

About Xilinx XA
The Xilinx Automotive (XA) product family is the industry's leading programmable logic family developed specifically for automotive applications. Xilinx automotive PLDs are already on the road in applications such as GPS, infotainment, communication, driver assistance and driver comfort. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com/automotive.

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