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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
XILINX RELEASES PLANAHEAD v2.1 TOOL WITH UP TO
89% INCREASE IN CLOCK FREQUENCY FOR VIRTEX SERIES FPGAS
Next-generation hierarchical floorplanning and
analysis tool now supports
90nm Virtex-4 family - the industry's highest density and fastest
FPGAs
SAN JOSE, Calif., October 28, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX)
today announced the immediate availability of its next generation
PlanAhead v2.1 FPGA hierarchical floorplanning and design tool.
With full support for the company's Virtex-4 Multi-Platform FPGA
family, the new tool dramatically improves maximum clock frequency
and time-to-market for leading edge designs through early analysis,
feedback and block based incremental flows. The Virtex-4 family-
the industry's fastest FPGA with up to 40% higher logic performance
over competing solutions - can now achieve performance improvements
of up to 89% with the use of the PlanAhead tool.
"We broke new ground with the overall methodology that PlanAhead
enables for FPGA design, establishing a new standard with respect
to productivity and timing closure through our highly automated
tool flow. The interactive capabilities of the new tool are a powerful
addendum to our toolkit that will greatly enhance designer productivity
and maintain our leadership position," said Rich Sevcik, executive
vice president of the FPGA Products Group at Xilinx.
The PlanAhead tool provides designers with unique capabilities in
analyzing designs early in the design construction phase. Analysis
features for timing, utilization, connectivity between modules,
clocks, and IO placement significantly reduce design iterations
and are intuitively embedded in the comprehensive tool for easy
use. These analysis features, combined with the hierarchical floorplanning
functionality available in the PlanAhead tool, make a true top-down
methodology even more accessible for designers addressing the challenges
of complex FPGA design.
PlanAhead has been added to the Xilinx toolkit through the company's
Hier Design acquisition. Version 2.1 is the first release of this
software since the June, 2004 acquisition. The release is strategically
timed with the release of Virtex-4 Platform FPGA family. With up
to 200,000 logic cells and up to 500 MHz performance, the Virtex-4
family delivers up to 2X the performance and density of any other
FPGA family currently in production. The PlanAhead tool has been
uniquely positioned by Xilinx to take full advantage of the Virtex-4
feature set. The PlanAhead floorplanning methodology enables designers
to first meet timing goals and quickly reproduce correct results
on subsequent revision of their designs. Flows for complex devices
such as the Virtex-4 family can be greatly enhanced by the block
based incremental design capabilities that are seamlessly enabled
through the new tool. PlanAhead has added design rule checks (DRC)
to catch problems that are found today only through place-and-route
runs. DRCs eliminate IO bank rule violations, over-utilized region
violations, clock region violations, carry chain violations etc.
The early analysis and DRC functionality allow the designer to focus
more on the design creation phase and less on the design debug issues.
Pricing & Availability
PlanAhead v2.1 is immediately available and is used with the Integrated
Software Environment (ISE) 6.3i FPGA design suite from Xilinx. The
tool is priced at $15,000. For more information about the new tool,
visit: http://www.xilinx.com/planahead.
For more information on the PlanAhead hierarchical floorplanner
and to request an evaluation, contact: fpga@xilinx.com
About Virtex-4 FPGAs
Enabled by the revolutionary ASMBL (Advanced Silicon Modular Block)
architecture, Virtex-4 FPGAs deliver more options than any other
FPGA family available today. With more than 100 technical innovations,
the Virtex-4 family consists of 17 devices and three domain-optimized
platforms: Virtex-4 LX FPGAs for logic-intensive designs, Virtex-4
SX FPGAs for high-performance signal processing, and Virtex-4 FX
FPGAs for high-speed serial connectivity and embedded processing.
A multi-platform approach makes it possible for customers to select
the optimal mix of resources for their application to achieve the
highest functionality and performance at the lowest cost.
About Xilinx
Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic
solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.
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