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Technology Stocks : Xilinx (XLNX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Trocchi who wrote (2932)	3/13/2003 9:02:44 PM
From: SemiBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3291

.... it just seems to me that tkey have some leasership products in a niche that will continue to expand in the future. They are indeed the Gorilla in their space IMHO. Xilinx switches low-k amid propaganda war By Anthony Cataldo and David Lammers, EE Times March 13, 2003 (9:02 p.m. EST) URL: eetimes.com SAN JOSE, Calif. — A propaganda war has broken out between the leading FPGA vendors after recent admissions by Xilinx that problems with the Silk low-k material at foundry IBM Corp. have caused it to make changes to its process technology. Altera has been putting a spotlight on the issue in an attempt to woo customers away from Xilinx and on to its own high-end FPGAs. The latest skirmish between the archrivals came after Xilinx chief financial officer Kris Chellam, under questioning by analysts at a recent financial conference, acknowledged that Xilinx had switched to a lower-grade dielectric material for its top-shelf Virtex-2 Pro products. "I think you will start to see in the next quarter or quarters an aggressive ramp of the V2pro...We're not aware of any technology problems. The only thing that has delayed the speed at which the v2pro has ramped has been some challenges we had with low-k technology, which we've now switched to FSG. So we are starting to get production volumes ramping at IBM and UMC and we'll continue to do that in the next three to six months,” Chellam said at a recent Morgan Stanley conference. Altera said the comments about the switch to FSG suggested that the low-k issues could throw the Xilinx product plans into disarray. After Chellam's remarks, an Altera spokeswoman questioned the company's ability to meet its product production and performance goals, and said some Xilinx customers would need to recharacterize their system designs as a result. “Xilinx chose low-k for the highest performance premium possible on 0.13-micron. This was a gamble that the rest of the industry, including Altera, abandoned some time ago. Now, Xilinx will take a step backwards with their only 0.13-micron product,” the spokeswoman claimed. Xilinx disputed these claims, saying Chellam's comments have been taken out of context as part of a deliberate attempt by Altera to discredit its larger competitor. “What's really happening is Altera has created the image that they're ahead of us in technology. The reality is that they're not,” said Willem Roelandts, president and CEO of Xilinx, in an interview with EE Times. Xilinx accuses Altera of sending out a memo to its customers, claiming that Xilinx was having production problems, which sparked a flood of emails from sales rep to the corporate headquarters here by the middle of last week. In response, Xilinx last weekend fired off to its customers a seething “Competitive Alert” to control the damage. “Altera is attacking Xilinx's Virtex-II Pro family by taking a statement made by Xilinx CFO at a recent analyst meeting and crafting a misleading and inaccurate message regarding Virtex-II Pro performance and availability,” the memo stated. A spokesman for IBM Microelectronics said IBM did ship "some" parts to Xilinx based on the Silk dielectric, but was unable to say what IBM is doing to fix whatever ongoing problems it is having with Silk. The spokesman deflected the attention on the low-k issue by saying that Xilinx is better positioned for the transition to 300-mm wafers than is Altera. "Today, Xilinx has eight parts being manufactured on 300-mm wafers with 130-nm design rules at either IBM or UMC. IBM has some of those, UMC has some also, and they are being made with a mix of low-k, FSG (fluorinated silicate glass) at IBM, and what UMC calls G-film, which is their form of FSG," he said. "Xilinx has two sources of parts made on 300-mm wafers," the IBM spokesman noted, while Altera has nothing. And 300-mm is a big deal in terms of costs because the area is two and one-half times (for a 300-mm wafer compared with a 200-mm wafer)." The spokesman questioned whether the issues surrounding Silk caused Xilinx to not meet its target specifications. "Whichever dielectric is used has little impact on the performance specs they promised," he said.