Xilinx FPGAs With Microblaze Processor Deliver 50% Speed Advantage Over Nearest Competitor

MicroBlaze Soft Processor Confirms Xilinx Overall FPGA Performance Leadership

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 21, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), continues its FPGA performance lead for design applications with the Xilinx MicroBlaze processor solution operating on the widely available Virtex II-Pro FPGA. Running at speeds of up to 150Mhz today, the MicroBlaze platform delivers a 50 percent speed advantage when compared to any other FPGA soft processing solution's measured results.

"When designers evaluate performance in real applications that use our 32-bit MicroBlaze processing architecture, Virtex-II Pro FPGAs deliver a significant performance advantage versus the nearest competitor," said Rich Sevcik, executive vice president at Xilinx. "This competitive comparison confirms the overall Xilinx FPGA benchmark methodology and results."

Proven System Performance
Xilinx processing performance, I/O bandwidth advantage, silicon and embedded design tools offer a competitive advantage of speed and higher levels of device utilization with the MicroBlaze soft processor platform.

Xilinx's design methodology is critical to attaining optimum speed and timing for today's FPGA-based designs. The flow adopted by Xilinx and familiar to ASIC designers is the process of driving the synthesis tools with proper timing constraints to achieve the best possible performance. This methodology enables the synthesis tool to leverage architectural features, optimize timing, and then pass timing constraints to place-and-route tools.

This Xilinx design methodology consistently delivers a performance advantage over other competitive solutions available at any given point in time. For example, in February 2002, Xilinx ISE 4.2i design tools delivered a 70 percent performance advantage for high-density designs versus other solutions that were available. Two years later, the February 2004 introduction of ISE 6.2i delivered on average 40 percent faster performance for all densities versus the nearest competitor.

Xilinx Processing Commitment
The MicroBlaze soft processor and associated host of peripherals is just one offering in the spectrum of processing solutions offered by Xilinx. The MicroBlaze processor core is a standard, powerful 32-bit RISC processor optimized for FPGA devices.

Today, base designs using a traditional single processor approach deliver over 150 MHz in Virtex-II Pro FPGAs and 85 MHz in a Spartan-3 FPGA. Features such as MicroBlaze's instruction acceleration support (FSL interface), configurable size instruction and data caches and multiple processor instantiations, coupled with a robust peripheral offering, generate unparalleled platform performance beyond the capabilities of traditional processing architectures.

Complete Development Environment
Xilinx's Platform Studio provides a common fully integrated hardware/software development environment that supports the complete range of Xilinx's processor solutions. Included in the Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK), the scalable Platform Studio enables designers to easily develop, integrate and debug their entire embedded system.

In addition, Xilinx provides an extensive peripheral library (over two hundred intellectual property cores), reference designs, development boards, internal and third party provided tools, and the most widely used operating systems including MontaVista Linux, Wind River VxWorks®, QNX Neutrino. A variety of embedded design services, training and support are also available from Xilinx to further ensure first-time design success with its processing solutions.

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