SAN JOSE, Calif., March 29, 2005 -Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced ISE WebPACK 7.1i - the company's latest version of its free, downloadable development system. The new tool supports the 32-bit version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and the company's Spartan-3 Generation, Virtex-4 and CoolRunner-II families. WebPACK 7.1i reduces overall design costs with new performance-boosting features, offering up to a full speed grade for free compared to competing PLD solutions. ISE WebPACK 7.1i is available now for download at: www.xilinx.com/ise/webpack7.
ISE WebPACK 7.1i incorporates unique elements of integration, speed, and ease of use to resolve some of the most pressing challenges for the company's rapidly growing base of over 200,000 designers. By adding support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Xilinx has combined the low cost benefits of the industry's most easily accessible design environment with the fastest growing EDA design platform. Linux has been recognized as a stable, low-cost, high-performance alternative to other higher cost development environments and allows designers to maximize corporate resources. Xilinx now augments the industry's lowest-cost and lowest-power FPGA and CPLD solutions with the most extensive front-to-back Linux support of any major PLD vendor.
ISE WebPACK 7.1i leverages many of the new features in ISE 7.1i (recently announced on March 1, 2005) to greatly enhance the designer's experience through improved ease-of-use. A new Technology Viewer feature provides a schematic view of post-synthesis/optimization netlists, enabling designers to confirm design integrity throughout the design cycle to speed development time and reduce overall costs. A new Design Summary view provides designers with instant access to the most useful design information in a single view and updates immediately as new information becomes available. Message Filtering capabilities allow users to customize output and reports to display only messages that are of the highest interest. Additionally, the new CableServer features enable remote configuration of devices across a network, allowing design teams to access common devices or boards from multiple locations. The new ModelSim Xilinx Edition-III Starter Version, the entry level configuration of the next generation in the Model Technology 6.0a family HDL simulator from Mentor Graphics, delivers up to 50% more performance and up to 20 times more capacity than previous versions. The free MXE-III Starter version is available for download from www.xilinx.com/ise/webpack7. Finally, WebPACK 7.1i delivers complete power analysis for either CPLD or FPGA designs with a new XPower tool, integrated with the free Xilinx Web Power Tools. With these tools, designers can achieve performance targets within their power budget quickly and accurately.
Along with this robust set of easy to use tools comes access to support.xilinx.com, one of the world's 10 Best Support Websites. Xilinx Education courses also offer further training on FPGA design, DSP, Embedded Processing and High-Speed Connectivity to make the ramp-up to programmable systems design even easier.
ISE WebPACK 7.1i now supports select devices from the new Spartan-3E (XC3S100E - XC3S500E) family - the world's lowest-cost FPGAs starting at less than $2.00*. In addition, ISE WebPACK 7.1i supports additional devices in the Virtex-4 (XC4VLX15 & XC4VLX25), Spartan-3 (XC3S1000 & XC3S1500), and Spartan-3L (XC3S1000L - XC3S1500L) FPGA families. This broad range of FPGA support, in addition to support for the high-quality, low-cost XC9500 and CoolRunner-II CPLD families, makes ISE WebPACK 7.1i an excellent no-cost design environment or entry into more advanced ISE 7.1i configurations.
Availability
ISE WebPACK 7.1i runs on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and now the 32-bit version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with support for all Xilinx leading-edge CPLD families, including CoolRunnerâ„¢-II and select FPGA devices from Spartanâ„¢-IIE, Spartan-3, Spartan-3E, Virtexâ„¢-II, Virtex-II Pro, and Virtex-4 FPGA families. Visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com/ise/webpack7 for complete information on the free ISE WebPACK 7.1i and other ISE products.