Xilinx broadens presence in storage area network market with new 1 & 2 Bgps fibre channel solution

SUPERCOMM, Chicago, Illinois, June 22, 2004 - In a move that broadens the FPGA leader's strength in the storage area network (SAN) market, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced the immediate availability of a new Fibre Channel intellectual property core for Virtex-II Pro™ devices operating at 1Gbps, 2Gbps or dual 1Gbps/2Gbps rates. The new solution has successfully completed interoperability and standards conformance testing at the University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Lab (UNH IOL), making it the FPGA industry's premier Fibre Channel offering. The Company is executing on its roadmap to provide the SAN market with complete Fibre Channel Solutions at 1, 2 and 4 Gbps.

With the introduction of the Fibre Channel LogiCORE, Xilinx now offers support for all the major serial connectivity standards, including Advanced Switching, PCI Express, Gigabit Ethernet, XAUI, 10G Ethernet and Serial RapidIO. It also allows Xilinx to support the protocols for the entire PICMG 3.0 data transport specification*. The collective benefit to systems designers is the availability of flexible, rigorously-tested IP solutions that enable product development with highly integrated, multiple protocol design support specifically developed to accelerate product development.

"Fibre Channel continues to be the storage industry's most widely accepted high-performance I/O standard in applications such as servers, disk arrays and SAN gateways," said Mark Aaldering, vice president of the IP Solutions Division at Xilinx. "By supporting proven, reliable IP for Fibre Channel in the context of an FPGA-based solution, Xilinx is offering a new level of flexibility and efficiency for product developers in these markets."

"The addition to the SAN space of a company with Xilinx's depth will enhance development of high performance interoperable solutions," said Stephen Schaeffer, manager of the Fibre Channel Consortium at UNH-IOL, "especially given Xilinx's history of attention to, and support of, testing of both standards compliance and interoperability."

Fibre Channel Core Availability
Fibre Channel is a high performance interface designed to bring speed and flexibility to multiple disk drive storage systems. It is widely considered to be the defacto standard for implementing Storage Area Networks (SANs) and provides versatile connectivity with scalable performance. The Xilinx core is designed to the ANSI INCITS X3-230-1994 (R1999), X3-297-1997 (R2002), X3-303-1998 FC-PH and T11-FC-FS (v1.9) specifications, and supports FC-0, FC-1 and part of FC-2.

Xilinx's Fibre Channel core (DO-DI-FC) is immediately available for the U.S. list price of $18,000. The core is delivered through the Xilinx Core Generator tool in the Xilinx ISE design environment. Deliverables include Verilog and VHDL simulation support, timing constraint files, sample compile scripts to aid in implementation, as well as a variety of application reference design and development board options and world-class technical support.

Xilinx's High-speed Serial Solutions
The Xilinx Serial Tsunami initiative accelerates the industry shift from parallel to serial I/O signaling technologies with next-generation connectivity solutions that support line rates from 622Mbps to 10Gbps and beyond. Xilinx's high performance Virtex-II Pro series of FPGAs deliver advanced features, including IBM PowerPC™ processors immersed within the industry's leading FPGA fabric, multi-gigabit RocketIO™ serial transceivers, and cutting-edge embedded design tools, combined with a suite of IP cores. This comprehensive solution addresses the broad range of connectivity requirements across the entire line to the backplane. More information about Xilinx's high-speed serial solutions is available at http://www.xilinx.com/serialsolution.

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