Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT Devices Move Into Production as New Virtex-5 TXT FPGA Platform Becomes Available

Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT Devices Move Into Production as New Virtex-5 TXT FPGA Platform Becomes Available

Backed by Extensive IP, Hardware Platforms, Tools and Software Support, Virtex-5 Family Continues Along its Path as Industry’s Leading High-Performance FPGAs

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ — Xilinx (Nasdaq: XLNX) today announced the Virtex(R)-5 FXT FPGA platform with 6.5 Gbps RocketIO(TM) GTX transceivers and embedded PowerPC(R) 440 processor cores has begun shipping in production, while samples of its new transceiver-optimized Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform are now available. As the industry’s most widely adopted 65nm high- performance FPGAs, only the Virtex-5 family gives designers a proven programmable solution for high-speed serial and high-performance embedded designs.

“The Virtex-5 SXT platform provides us with an unprecedented level of flexibility and scalability for processing and managing streaming data sources over a wide range of applications. The faster Multi-Gigabit Transceivers allow higher bandwidths between the FPGAs on our WILDSTAR 5 boards, and between the boards and the outside world, enabling a new class of solutions,” said Jane Donaldson, president and CEO of Annapolis Micro Systems, Inc. “Our CoreFire FPGA Application Development Tool provides almost effortless technology refresh, to allow the user to take advantage of the new and improved Virtex-5 FXT features. The PowerPC 440 processor block integrated with DSP, PCIe(R), EMAC and high-speed transceiver capabilities on a single platform, further enhances the capability of these new parts.”

Now shipping in production are the Virtex-5 FX30T, FX70T, and FX130T devices, with the remaining FX100T and FX200T devices available now as samples and scheduled to be in production by the end of the month. The new Virtex-5 TXT platform, built for use in next generation Ethernet bridging and other ultra high-bandwidth applications has also begun shipping with the Virtex-5 TX240T available as samples, and is on track to be in production by the end of first quarter, 2009. Finally, the Virtex-5 SX240T device, built to deliver up to 528 GMACs of multiply-and-accumulate performance and over 190 GFLOPS of single-precision, floating-point DSP performance, will also be shipping in production by the end of the month.

“The ability to use the Virtex-5 FXT platform for initial prototyping and evaluation and then drop in the new Virtex-5 FXT device in the same package has enabled us to accelerate our time to market,” stated John Jensen, lead system architect at Rincon Research. “Enhancing the Virtex-5 SXT FPGA platform with higher speed transceivers and high performance PowerPC 440 block with integrated processor interconnect, allows us to begin addressing customers increased performance and bandwidth demands. Whether used for data collection systems and/or high performance data analysis applications, the Virtex-5 family provides a highly integrated SOC platform to address our markets like never before.”

Xilinx broke new ground when it began shipping the industry’s first domain-optimized FPGAs in May 2006. Available in five platforms each optimized for specific application needs, Virtex-5 FPGAs are the world’s first 65nm FPGA family fabricated in 1.0v, triple-oxide process technology, providing up to 330,000 logic cells, 1,200 I/O pins, 48 low-power transceivers, and built-in PowerPC 440 processor, PCIe endpoint and Ethernet MAC blocks, depending upon the device selected. Currently all 26 Virtex-5 devices are available for designs backed by extensive IP, hardware development platforms, development tool support, and characterization reports. Furthermore, the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA offers the first FPGA-based 5 Gbps x8 PCIe 2.0 solution, and has recently passed the first round of specification testing at the PCI-SIG(R) Compliance Workshop #62. The Virtex-5 FXT FPGA platform is now on the industry organization’s official integrator’s list. The same GTX transceivers are also available in the TXT platform and enable customers to take advantage the high transceiver count and offer a low-risk path to implement PCIe 2.0 based applications.

“The rapid adoption of our Virtex-5 family of FPGAs reflects the growing need for high-performance, highly integrated programmable solutions. The variety and capabilities available in the Virtex-5 family demonstrate our leadership in 65nm process offerings, allowing us to integrate serial I/O, digital processing and embedded processing capabilities in a single device,” said Chuck Tralka, senior director of Production Marketing at Xilinx. “System designers can take advantage of the domain-optimized architecture to choose the specific device with the optimal resource mix to meet the performance and power targets of today’s high-performance system designs.”

Pricing and Availability

Xilinx has been delivering the benefits of 65nm Virtex-5 FPGAs since May 2006, and is now delivering 26 devices across five platforms (LX, LXT, SXT, FXT and TXT). Devices are available through Xilinx distributors at http://www.xilinx.com/onlinestore/silicon/online_store_v5.htm. The Virtex-5 FX30T, FX70T, and FX130T production devices, as well as FX100T, FX200T and TX240T engineering samples may be purchased through Xilinx distributors at http://www.xilinx.com/onlinestore/silicon/online_store_v5.htm. The Virtex-5 SX240T, FX100T, FX200T, are scheduled to be in production by end of the calendar year, with the TX150T and TX240T devices scheduled to be in production by end of first calendar quarter of 2009.

Detailed pricing information on all three devices is available through Xilinx sales offices and distributors. Xilinx Virtex-5 EasyPath(TM) FPGAs offer a conversion-free path to high volume with up to 75 percent cost reduction. Virtex-5 EasyPath devices are available now for design with volume production at the end of 2008. Visit http://www.xilinx.com/virtex5 or http://www.xilinx.com/easypath for more information. ■