Avnet And Xilinx Deliver Low-Cost Serial I/O Design Kit For Industry-Leading Virtex-II Pro FPGAs

PHOENIX, Ariz. and SAN JOSE, Calif., November 25, 2003 - Avnet Cilicon and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced a new multi-gigabit serial I/O design kit. The kit includes hardware, tools and reference designs based on the industry-leading Xilinx Aurora open protocol to enable designers to easily adopt the high-speed serial I/O technology of the Virtex-II Pro family. The kit is immediately available at a special introductory price of $499. As part of the design kit rollout, Avnet will offer a hands-on workshop to provide customers with an introduction to high-speed serial designs.

"The new design kit and hands-on workshopS will allow customers to easily take advantage of the high-speed serial transceivers in the Virtex-II Pro family," said Per Holmberg, director of Virtex Solutions Marketing at Xilinx. "Customers are interested in low cost, entry-level solutions and training to realize the low system cost and performance benefits afforded by serial I/O technology."

About the Design Kit
The kit features a hardware evaluation board with a Virtex-II Pro (2VP7) device and a host of functions including: 64MB of DDR SDRAM, eight 3.125 Gbps Xilinx multi-gigabit serial transceivers, thirty LVDS pairs, four 7-segment displays, one RS-232 port, and two 140-pin AvBus expansion connectors. The board seamlessly connects with other Avnet Avenue processor, audio, video, networking and memory boards. Additionally, the kit includes a variety of Aurora reference designs, schematics and layout files, documentation, and application notes to help designers accelerate overall design time.

"Avnet Cilicon is pleased to announce the introduction of this new design kit and its use in our upcoming Avnet SpeedWay Design Workshop series," said Jim Schaeffer, senior vice president of Avnet Design Services. "The Avnet SpeedWay Design workshops will each target specific new applications, technologies and tools and will feature real-world hands-on design examples using Avnet Avenue hardware developed by Avnet Design Services. During these workshops our FAEs have enough time to dig into the details of an application or technology and share the knowledge we acquire doing real designs so our customers can directly benefit from our experience."

High Speed, Avnet SpeedWay Design Workshop
The Avnet Cilicon Speed-way workshop will provide customers with an introduction to high-speed serial I/O design. The workshop will include a hands-on design example using the Xilinx Aurora open protocol, allowing students to design, compile, download and test multi-channel 3.125 Gbps applications. Complete information on the workshop schedule, locations, and featured laboratory classes are available on the web at www.em.avnet.com/avnetspeedway.

Customers attending Avnet's workshop will receive a coupon for 10% off the Xilinx two-day Designing with Multi-Gigabit Serial I/O course. Xilinx offers this intermediate level course with content that complements Avnet's workshop. Within the course, customers learn how to utilize the features of the Virtex-II Pro RocketIO transceiver blocks, such as CRC, 8b/10b encoding, channel bonding, clock correction, and comma detection. Additional topics include debugging techniques, use of the Architecture Wizard, synthesis and implementation considerations, and standards compliance. For a complete information on the Xilinx Education Services course, visit www.xilinx.com/education.

Pricing and Availability
The design kit is available now through local Avnet Cilicon sales offices or over the web. The kit can be ordered as Avnet Design Services part number ADS-XLX-P2A-DK for $499. For complete information about the design kit or other Avnet Avenue kits, visit www.avnetavenue.com.

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

About Avnet Electronics Marketing
Avnet Electronics Marketing is the largest operating group of Phoenix-based Avnet Inc. (NYSE:AVT), a Fortune 500 company with fiscal 2003 sales of $9 billion, and one of the world's largest technology marketing, distribution and services companies. Avnet Electronics Marketing, Americas (EMA) serves electronic original equipment manufacturers (EOEMs) and electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers in North America and Brazil through three focused business divisions, distributing electronic components from leading manufacturers and providing associated services. Avnet Cilicon focuses solely on semiconductors with dedicated channels to specific end-market segments; Avnet IP&E is the leading interconnect, passive and electromechanical components specialist; and Avnet Supply Chain Services provides end-to-end supply chain optimization programs. The company's Web site is located at www.em.avnet.com.