INDUSTRY

Xilinx, the world's leading supplier of programmable logic solutions, today announced that its advanced platforms group has established a research and development (R&D) team in its Asia Pacific headquarters to assist in the development of the company's next-generation 45nm platform field programmable gate array (FPGA) family. Working closely with the product divisions and R&D centers in the United States, the local team will be one of the first in Singapore to design at the leading-edge 45nm process technology node and will help Xilinx become one of the first companies in the world to deliver a 45nm chip. The local R&D team will assist in developing new design tools and implementation solutions to address the unique challenges of this advanced process node. They will contribute to design innovation in product development methodology and block architecture to increase performance and reduce power consumption for the company's next-generation platform FPGA family. Their R&D work will range from functional design, functional/holistic verification, and physical implementation to design validation, silicon characterization and verification. The team will also consult with key customers across the region to help identify future product requirements and use this customer feedback in the product development cycle. Platform FPGAs integrate high-performance logic, serial connectivity, digital signal processing (DSP) and embedded processing onto a single programmable device. By providing higher system-level integration, lower total system costs, faster time-to-market and upgradeable features, platform FPGAs are being used by system designers to replace application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and application specific standard products (ASSPs) in a wide-range of high-performance applications, such as wired/wireless communications, networking, audio/video/broadcast and storage/server. Therefore, this next-generation platform FPGA family will enable the company to further expand into the US$22.4 billion high-performance segment of the global ASIC/ASSP/FPGA market. "Establishing an R&D team in our Asia Pacific headquarters is another significant milestone for our global expansion plans and increases our focus on this strategically important region," said Wim Roelandts, president, CEO and chairman of the board for Xilinx. "This is a long-term commitment from our company to develop a programmable chip R&D facility in Singapore to address the high-performance needs of our key customers across Asia Pacific." "Our regional headquarters will play an integral part of our strategy to be one of the first to reach the next process technology node so that our customers will benefit from higher integration, increased performance and lower costs," added Stacy Fender, managing director, Xilinx Asia Pacific. "By placing next-generation chip design capabilities in Singapore, we are helping the local semiconductor industry to build expertise in advanced process technologies."