Xilinx Delivers Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs - World's Most Capable High-Speed Serial Transceiver Solution

First to support all common high-speed serial applications at any speed between 2.488 Gbps and 10.3125 Gbps including 10Gbit Ethernet, SONET OC48, and proprietary backplanes

SAN JOSE, Calif., November 17, 2003 - Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced the immediate availability of its Virtex-II Pro X family, the industry’s first FPGAs with integrated multi-gigabit transceivers (MGTs), each supporting up to 10.3125 Gbps. The Virtex-II ProX FPGAs are the functionally compatible extension of the highly successful Virtex-II Pro family. With over 10,000 worldwide customer engagements, Virtex-II Pro FPGAs have seen rapid adoption in a wide-range of applications. With the delivery of the Virtex-II ProX FPGAs, Xilinx further enhances the industry’s most comprehensive set of programmable serial solutions supporting all commonly used high-speed serial standards while providing a seamless migration path for serial applications including popular nodes such as 2.5, 3.125, 5, 6.25 and 10 Gbps. 

Delivery of the Virtex-II Pro X FPGA family was completed ahead of the intended schedule, and ahead of all competing solutions. This accomplishment is a direct result of Xilinx’s internal R&D team, a group of experts focused solely on the engineering and support of leading-edge multi-gigabit serial connectivity design solutions. For additional information visit www.xilinx.com/virtex2prox/.

In related news today, Xilinx announced RocketLabs, the world's first network of high-speed serial design labs, providing free access to state-of-the-art equipment at 15 worldwide locations. With today's news, the company further realizes its Serial Tsunami initiative. Designers now have immediate access to the industry's most comprehensive suite of serial connectivity solutions design resources including Virtex-II Pro and Virtex-II Pro X silicon, IP, design software, reference designs, hardware development platforms, training, and free access to high-performance equipment and hands-on design expertise. 

"Serial solutions will ultimately be deployed in nearly every aspect of every electronic product imaginable from chip-to-chip interfacing, backplane connectivity and system boards to box-to-box communications," said Erich Goetting, vice president and general manager of the Advanced Product Group at Xilinx. "Our customers have made it clear that providing near term solutions at 5 and 6 Gbps for backplane applications with scalability to 10Gbps are critical components for their success. By providing a comprehensive set of design resources, Xilinx has developed everything a designer needs to make the inevitable move from parallel to serial and increase the confidence for first time serial design success."

"This technology is imperative to the industry's move toward serial connectivity. Xilinx's offering of 10 Gbps solutions with the advent of a seamless low risk integration path to get there will spur the broad deployment of high-speed serial technology," said Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at IDC. "Beginning with the announcement of Virtex-II Pro last year, Xilinx has established a clear technology lead by providing a complete suite of high speed serial connectivity solutions including IP, silicon, software and services."

"Xilinx Virtex-II Pro multi-gigabit transceivers saved us not only pins but also routing resources on our PCBs. As this application required multiple channels, the Xilinx solution was perfect in terms of board space, cost, and performance," said Dae Woo Song, hardware designer at LG Electronics, a global leader in electronics and telecommunications, headquartered in Korea. "We benchmarked commercial SERDES versus the Virtex-II Pro solution and Xilinx was the clear choice. We completed the design on schedule and are looking forward to using the new Virtex-II Pro X devices in future applications."

About Xilinx Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs
The company's new Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs incorporate up to 20 RocketIO X multi-gigabit transceivers, supporting operating ranges of 2.488 Gbps to 10.3125 Gbps per channel. Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs are the first programmable ICs that can directly drive optical transceiver OC-48 SONET compliant systems and simplify SONET implementation for OC-192 data rates and above. Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs also enable new applications, which require multiple high-speed serial channels each running in speeds up 10 Gbps, including popular bandwidth nodes such as 4.25 Gbps, 5 Gbps, and 6 Gbps. The 10 Gbps transceivers, when used in multiples, will support effective bandwidths through the FPGA of more than 40 Gbps.

The integrated 10 Gbps RocketIO X transceiver includes options of 8B/10B or 64B/66B coding, 20-bit or 16-bit data path, and 20x or 16x clocking. It also offers channel bonding, and several performance tuning features, including pre-emphasis, receiver equalization, differential voltage swing, and on-chip termination. The10G Base-R circuitry significantly simplifies implementation for 10G Ethernet applications. The RocketIO X transceivers are adaptive to system requirements and can be dynamically programmed via an internal configuration port. 

Since the introduction of the company's flagship Virtex-II Pro family in March 2002, embedded 3.125 Gbps transceivers have been an integral part of the Virtex-II Pro platform FPGA design win momentum. With the addition of the Virtex-II Pro X FPGAs, the enhanced Virtex-II Pro family can support an even wider range of chip-to-chip, board-to-board, box-to-box, and chip-to-optics applications with added support for new serial standards such has 10G Ethernet (10G Base-R/W/X), 10 G Fibre Channel (4 x 3.1875 Gbps), SxI-5, TFI-5, XFP, VSR optics, and the recently announced UXPi specification. 

Virtex-II Pro X devices are compatible with the Virtex-II Pro family of devices, providing seamless scalability and low risk migration path to 10 Gbps for current Virtex-II Pro customers.

Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the XC2VPX20 device is under $120.00 (50K, 2H 2004). Pricing for the XC2VPX70 device is under $750 (25K, 2H 2004).

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