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Gibson Guitar
GIBSON CHOOSES XILINX AS CHIP SUPPLIER OF CHOICE
AT 2004 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW
Xilinx Spartan-3 low cost programmable chips enable Gibson's
MaGIC Digital Guitar
LAS VEGAS, Nev, January 8, 2004 At the 2004 Consumer Electronics
Show (CES) today, Gibson Guitar and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX),
announced that Xilinx has been chosen as the FPGA supplier of choice
for production of its 2003 award winning MaGIC true-digital guitar.
Gibson credits Xilinx reprogrammable Spartan-3 FPGAs as an enabling
critical component in its groundbreaking digital guitar and internally
derived MaGIC protocol. The MaGIC Digital Guitar, winner of the
2003 prestigious Best of Show award is on display in Gibson booth
#SFE1 at the CES show January 8-11, at the Las Vegas Convention
Center.
"We selected Xilinx's low cost programmable chips to debut
our digital guitar at last year's CES and will continue to use Xilinx
chips throughout production," said Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman
and CEO of Gibson Guitar. "The programmable nature of Xilinx
FPGAs not only provided a flexible high-performance design platform
for Gibson's digital products, it also provided the low cost silicon
solution we needed to make it happen."
"Our partnership with Gibson is a prime example of our vision
to bring the digital age to the consumer market," said Clay
Johnson, vice president and general manager of the General Products
division at Xilinx. "The programmability of Xilinx FPGAs also
provides Gibson with the ability to achieve its vision of licensing
its technology to other music and consumer product manufacturers
for future product development."
Xilinx Gains Traction in Consumer Space
Gibson is among a growing number of consumer product manufacturers
to realize the competitive advantage afforded by Xilinx's low-cost
programmable chips, versus traditional ASIC technology. Xilinx attributes
its recent record-breaking gain to its focused market diversification
efforts and the broad adoption of its low cost Spartan Series FPGAs
in high-volume consumer applications.
About Xilinx Low Cost FPGAs
Xilinx first shipped the Spartan-3 family in March 2003 as the world's
first and only FPGA utilizing 90nm process technology. The Spartan-3
platform is the world's lowest cost FPGA with unrivaled price points,
starting at under $2.95*. Already, the Spartan Series is the world's
most successful low-cost FPGA family in its class with over 11,000
customers worldwide. Since the introduction of the Spartan Series
in 1998, the company has shipped more than 60 million devices. By
continuing to set new price-density standards for the FPGA industry,
Xilinx has dramatically narrowed the price-performance gap between
programmable and fixed logic. This has driven Spartan-3 device adoption
further into higher volume consumer applications and hastened the
decline of ASIC designs.
About MaGIC
Gibson will offer MaGIC, an acronym for Media-accelerated Global
Information Carrier, in every Gibson guitar going forward. The Gibson
Digital Guitar brings the 1930s technology of today's electric guitar
into the digital age opening virtually unlimited array of musical
possibilities for guitarists. MaGIC applies the digital technology
invented for computer network products and adapts them to the audio
network. This requires adaptability of the MaGIC standard, made
possible by using a programmable versus fixed logic solution.
About Gibson Guitar
Gibson is known worldwide for producing classic models in every
major style of fretted instrument, including acoustic and electric
guitars, mandolins, and banjos. Gibson's digital guitar, introduced
in 2003, represents the biggest advance in electric guitar design
in over 70 years. Founded in 1894 in Kalamazoo, MI, and headquartered
in Nashville since 1984, Gibson Guitar Corp.'s family of brands
now includes Epiphone, Dobro, Valley Arts, Kramer, Steinberger,
Tobias, Slingerland, Trace Elliot, Maestro, Baldwin, Ellington,
Chickering and Wurlitzer. Visit Gibson's website at www.gibson.com.
About Xilinx
Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic
solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.
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