Xilinx Ships World's First Advanced Switching Solution Based on PCI Express Architecture

Company's Virtex-II Pro FPGAs enable rapid deployment of  open standard- based switched fabric backplanes

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., February 17, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced it's shipping the world's first Advanced Switching (AS) solution based on PCI Express architecture to enable the rapid deployment of open standards-based switched fabric backplanes and other product solutions. The solution includes an AS intellectual property core implemented in the RocketIO™ serial transceivers and IBM PowerPC™ 405 of the company's flagship Virtex®-II Pro FPGAs - the industry's most popular FPGA for serial design. Xilinx delivers its AS solution just one month after the ASI-SIG announced the specification as final (http://www.asi-sig.org/press/releases/ASI-SIG_Spec_Announcement.pdf), expediting the implementation of AS by twelve to eighteen months. For complete information about the Xilinx AS solution, visit www.xilinx.com/serialsolution.

"Advanced Switching is built on top of the PCI Express technology and brings the lower cost and performance advantages of the PCI Express technology to the rapidly growing serial backplane market," said Rajeev Kumar, president of the ASI SIG and Advanced Switching initiatives manager at Intel. "The immediate availability of the Xilinx solution enables designers to start developing applications in standard ATCA as well as custom backplanes for communications equipment including access, edge and storage systems."

Xilinx is demonstrating the AS solution today for the first time at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, California (Intel Pavilion Booth # 42 and Intel Communications Alliance Booth #509). The demonstration showcases the new AS IP core in a protocol bridge developed by Xilinx Design Services, for an ATM software application featuring Intel network processors and Virtex-II Pro FPGAs with Xilinx's new AdvancedTCA™ development platform - also introduced today, visit www.xilinx.com/prs_rls/ip/0428_atca_backplane.htm.

"Availability of an AS solution so early in the specification lifecycle will allow designers to immediately start designing intelligent communications or computing applications based on the new specification," said Mark Aaldering, senior director of the IP Solutions Division at Xilinx. "Virtex-II Pro's programmable fabric, embedded PowerPC processor and serial transceivers allowed us to develop the core in parallel with the definition of the specification - a design methodology that ASICs or ASSPs can not compete with."

Today's news underscores Xilinx's commitment to provide customers with broadest portfolio of complete serial connectivity solutions for tomorrow's computing and communication designs. Xilinx, along with other industry leaders, is on the board of directors of the new ASI-SIG and is actively participating in the continuing development and enhancement of the Advanced Switching specification.

The Advanced Switching Core
The Xilinx AS IP core uses the Xilinx Smart-IP™ technology to reach 2.5 Gbps line speed utilizing the features of the RocketIO multi-gigabit transceivers such as clock data recovery, 8B/10B encoding, 3.125 Gbps SerDes, transmit/receive FIFOs, and CRC. The IBM PowerPC 405 processor embedded in the Virtex-II Pro FPGA fabric is used to implement the AS configuration space, freeing up to 20% fabric resources in the target device. Virtex-II Pro's unique HW/SW trade-off ability allows customers to implement their designs in a smaller part generating significant cost savings over competing devices. Advanced Switching architecture is complementary to PCI Express and fills the need for a multi-point, peer-to-peer switched fabric architecture that further accelerates the transition to convergence by meeting customer demand for a standard between Ethernet and high-end proprietary fabrics.

About Serial Tsunami and Xilinx Solutions for High-speed Serial Backplanes
The Xilinx Serial Tsunami initiative was introduced to help accelerate the industry shift from parallel to serial I/O signaling technologies by delivering next generation connectivity solutions which support line rates from 622 Mbps to 10 Gbps and beyond. Xilinx's high performance Virtex-II Pro family of FPGAs deliver industry leading features, including IBM PowerPC™ processors immersed into the industry's leading FPGA fabric, muti-gigabit RocketIO™ serial transceivers, and cutting-edge embedded design tools, combined with a suite of IP cores - representing a comprehensive solution for a broad range of connectivity requirements across the entire line to the backplane.

License price and availability
The AS core is available now as a LogiCORE product under the terms of SignOnce IP license and is priced at $25,000. Once purchased, it can be configured and downloaded from the Xilinx website at http://www.xilinx.com/serialsolution. For more information and to purchase the Virtex-II Pro FPGA, visit www.xilinx.com/platform. Information about licensing and other Xilinx LogiCORE products is available on the Xilinx IP Center at www.xilinx.com/ipcenter.

About Xilinx Design Services
Xilinx Design Services is a global organization focused on providing customers with the optimal benefits of programmable logic. Led by professionals with proven project management skills, the XDS team of FPGA hardware engineers, embedded software designers, product specialists, and system architects help customers get their products to market faster, more cost-effectively, and with optimal performance. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com/xds.

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

Xilinx is an Associate Member with the Intel® Communications Alliance, a community of communications and embedded developers and solution providers. For more information, please visit www.intel.com/go/ica.

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