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

To: Lucinos who wrote (2067)	11/12/1998 11:38:00 AM
From: w2j2	Respond to of 3291

Killer App: By Dean Takahashi, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal SAN JOSE, Calif. -(Dow Jones)- Silicon Valley chip maker Xilinx Inc. says it has created "reconfigurable chips" that give manufacturers the ability to upgrade their hardware systems over the Internet, even if they have already shipped to customers. With chips that essentially rewire themselves on command, hardware makers will be able to easily fix flaws in products or send product upgrades, said Richard Sevcik, senior vice president at Xilinx (XLNX) in San Jose, Calif. "We believe this will revolutionize the flexibility of network-connected products," he said. The idea for such chips has been around since the 1960s, but developments in the past decade have made Xilinx's Virtex chips more practical. The system designer uses special software tools to turn on or off different parts of the chip until its circuitry can perform the desired function. Long after the chip has left the factory, it can be reconfigured with programs based on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (SUNW) Java programming language. A designer can change the hardware over a network by sending updates via small Java programs known as applets. The applets contain new circuit layouts for the chips, which can then be automatically reconfigured according to the designer's instructions. Sevcik said numerous companies are already working on products that will use the chip. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), for instance, is using them for network hardware devices known as asynchronous transfer mode switches, which route data in high-speed networks. Using the Xilinx chips, IBM can change the configuration of the switches so that they can handle different kinds of data traffic, or be updated to handle changes in data standards. "It could turn into a huge market," said Jordan Selburn, an analyst at market researcher Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif. Sevcik said a cellular-phone manufacturer, for instance, could use the chips in telephones that could adjust themselves so they can work in any country. "Somebody traveling around the world could find that their phone would (automatically) reconfigure itself several times in a day," he said. This scheme also could be used with a variety of hardware, such as Web TV set-top boxes, network computers, personal computers, networking equipment, cellular phones-just about anything connected to a network. Consider a satellite. Once in orbit, it usually can't be changed. But if it uses programmable Virtex chips, the satellite could be maintained or repaired by sending it new software to reconfigure the chips. "We're not always going to have John Glenn around for the task," Sevcik said. "Nobody has to replace the older technology just because something different came out, like a new technical standard." The programmable chips compete with custom semiconductor chips produced by companies such as LSI Logic Inc. (LSI). Custom chips can fulfill the same functions with smaller chips, because the Xilinx programmable feature requires a lot of extra circuitry. Hence, the programmable chips sell for about $50 each, compared with about $7 each for custom chips when bought in large quantities. Xilinx has already begun shipping its Virtex programmable chips to customers and it will deliver better software tools for configuring the chips by the second quarter of next year.