Xilinx Ships First Artix-7 FPGAs – Raising the Performance Bar for Portable and Small Form Factor Applications at the ‘Edge’

A new FPGA performance standard with the lowest power and lowest cost 

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 17, 2011 – Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced first shipments of its Artix™-7 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) family. The new devices extend the reach of FPGA technology to applications requiring performance capabilities traditionally served by Virtex® FPGAs, but the form factor of small, low-cost programmable devices. Makers of portable medical, hand-held radio, and small cellular base stations – and a host of other professional grade applications that sit at the edge of their respective technology infrastructures – can now leverage high-end All Programmable FPGA capabilities to a growing number of products and expand their markets.

For portable applications where advanced functionality remains paramount, Artix-7 devices deliver best-in-class system performance, power efficiency, compactness and low cost.  With the first Artix-7 A100T device shipments to customers, all of Xilinx’s 7 series and Zynq™-7000 families are now available in silicon, marking another major milestone in Xilinx’s rollout of its 28nm generation of devices.

“Xilinx introduced the Artix-7 family with edge applications in mind,” said Dave Myron, Xilinx’s director of FPGA platform marketing.  “Artix-7 devices extend Xilinx’s low-cost product portfolio established by the Spartan® families, which already play critical roles in applications ranging from 3D TVs, Automotive Infotainment, Industrial Control and Mobile Medical devices.”

The Artix-7 family pushes performance limits at the lowest levels of power consumption because Xilinx chose TSMC’s High-Performance, Low-Power (HPL) process for its 28nm generation portfolio. This means customers can achieve sub-watt total power consumption for battery powered applications like secure software defined military radios, where Artix-7 devices can offer 35 percent lower power consumption compared to competing solutions. Customers can combine the latest encryption IP and modem functions on a single chip for meeting size requirements while lowering BOM.  Also, the rich integrated DSP capabilities in the largest member delivers 1,306 GMACs of signal processing performance for wideband waveforms, which is more than 3x the competition.

The Artix-7 family offers 65 percent lower static and 50 percent lower dynamic power consumption than previous generation devices while delivering up to sixteen 6.6 Gb/s transceivers, meaning builders of portable ultrasound equipment can achieve the highest image resolution for meeting JESD204B high speed serial interface standards. At the same time, they can extend battery life and meet safety standards while implementing a 128-channel beam former at 40 percent less power than alternative FPGAs.

For builders of microwave backhaul equipment supporting 4G rollouts around the world, Artix-7 devices enable developers to integrate modem and packet processing functions on a single device and have the highest performance per watt for delivering intelligent bandwidth.  In a market where the ‘Holy Grail’ is a base station on a chip, Artix-7 devices give equipment manufacturers unprecedented levels of integration as well the programmability necessary to compete where market growth is outpacing standardization.

In Xilinx’s two newest videos, Artix-7 devices demonstrate the robustness of the 6.6 Gb/s transceiver, the capabilities for DSP applications and the ultra low power characteristics of the family.  These videos, a new white paper and other resources can be found on Xilinx’s Artix-7 web page.

Availability

First Artix-7 A100T FPGAs are available today with production qualification scheduled for Q1 of CY2013. Designers can begin their Artix-7 family designs today using Xilinx design tools. For more information, please visit www.xilinx.com/products/artix7.

Contact:

Xilinx

Christelle Moraga

+44 1932 836 526

christelle.moraga@xilinx.com

Beky Cann

Neesham Public Relations

Tel: 44 (0) 1296 628180

Email:   bekyc@neesham.co.uk

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the world’s leading provider of All Programmable FPGAs, SoCs and 3D ICs. These industry-leading devices are coupled with a next-generation design environment and IP to serve a broad range of customer needs, from programmable logic to programmable systems integration. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.

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