SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 12, 1998--Xilinx, Inc.,
(NASDAQ:XLNX), the world leader in CMOS programmable logic devices,
today announced the availability of a full suite of intellectual
property (IP) cores that supports the new Spartan series of low cost
FPGAs.
The cores are available today from both Xilinx and its
AllianceCORE partners and include universal asynchronous
receivers/transceivers (UARTs), microprocessor peripherals,
Reed-Solomon and Viterbi codecs, and RISC processors.
"This is the first time a complete set of cores has been
introduced simultaneously with a new family of programmable logic,"
said Rich Sevcik, Xilinx senior vice president of software. "Customers
can immediately leverage the time-to-market value of cores with the
industry's lowest cost line of FPGA products, providing them with a
complete solution."
Spartan opens new high volume, price sensitive consumer
applications for programmable logic ranging from personal computers,
cable modems, set-top boxes, and video games to CD players and PC
peripherals such as graphics and network add-in cards. In high-volume
applications, Spartan pricing reaches as low as half a cent per logic
cell or more than 40 gates per penny.
Thus, implementing an 8 x 8 multiplier LogiCORE product, which
consumes 129 logic cells in an XCS30XL device, would cost $0.65 out of
the total device cost of $6.95. Likewise the table demonstrates
further examples of silicon implementation costs.
*T
Effective Function Costs for Spartan Cores
Percentage Effective
Core function XCS30XL price(a) of device function
used cost
UART $6.95 17% $1.20
16-bit RISC processor 6.95 36% 2.50
16-bit, 16-tap symmetrical
FIR filter 6.95 27% 1.90
Reed-Solomon Encoder 6.95 6% 0.40
PCI Interface (w/ faster
speed grade) 10.45 65% 6.80
(a) 100,000 units, mid-1999
*T
"When Xilinx showed us the Spartan series, we immediately saw
that it provided the perfect combination of features, performance, and
price," said Dasaradha Gude, CEO of Virtual IP Group, a Sunnyvale,
Calif., AllianceCORE partner that currently offers Intel-compatible
microprocessor peripheral and UART cores for Xilinx devices.
"Customers no longer need to worry about the cost of the FPGA when
they purchase IP from us. It made perfect sense for us to port our
cores to the Spartan series."
"Processors have always been too expensive when implemented in
FPGAs," said Terence Lo, vice president of T7L Technology, an
AllianceCORE partner based in North York, Ont., Canada. T7L offers a
number of RISC processor cores for Spartan devices. "With the Spartan
series, we can provide very high performance at price points that are
competitive with standard devices. This will immediately expand the
market for our cores."
"The Spartan series breaks new ground in FPGA price performance,"
said Tim Smith, director of Memec Design Services, Mesa, Ariz., which
offers microprocessor peripheral cores through the AllianceCORE
program. "Since our FPGA cores are so efficient to start with,
customers can now get custom, programmable silicon solutions at
standard product prices."
The Spartan series leverages all of the core-friendly features of
the XC4000 series, including segmented routing and distributed
SelectRAM. This makes it possible to design cores more efficiently and
with more predictable performance while consuming less power than
non-segmented, or continuous interconnect architectures.
"The performance and efficiency we achieve with our DSP cores
would not be possible without the segmented routing and distributed
RAM of the Xilinx architecture," said James Doherty, managing director
of Integrated Silicon Systems, Ltd., of Belfast, Northern Ireland,
which markets Reed-Solomon codecs and other DSP functions through the
AllianceCORE program.
"The combination of the Xilinx feature set and the Xilinx
development software is allowing us to get performance that we never
thought possible with programmable logic. And with the Spartan series,
customers don't have to pay a silicon premium to get this."
All of the Xilinx DSP LogiCORE products support Spartan devices
today. The Xilinx LogiCORE PCI interface, the industry's most
successful PCI core, is expected to be available before the end of
this quarter. Additional cores for the Spartan series and all Xilinx
devices will be added as the Xilinx CORE Solutions product portfolio
grows. |
