Carlis Collins, Editor in Chief Editor@xilinx.com Tom Durkin, Managing Editor Tom.Durkin@xilinx.com

Welcome to Our Programmable World

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Here at Xilinx, we do not follow the trends of business and technology -- we set them. Take, for example, our new family of Spartan™-3 Platform FPGAs -- the first reprogrammable logic devices to be manufactured with the state-of-the-art 90 nm process technology. Because 90 nm device geometries enable more transistors in a smaller area, Xilinx has reduced die size with this new generation of Platform FPGAs by as much as 80 percent -- and increased density to as many as 5 million system gates with as many as 1,200 user I/Os. Perhaps most important of all, Spartan-3 FPGAs are priced to replace ASICs in high-volume production. Now the FPGA you use to prototype your design can be the FPGA you use in the manufacture of your design.

We are also pleased to announce in this edition of XJ the RocketPHY family of 10 Gbps CMOS Physical Layer (PHY) transceivers. Designed on a standard 0.15 µm CMOS process, RocketPHY devices are the first Xilinx family of Physical Layer OC-192 SONET-compliant transceivers optimized for a wide range of 10 Gbps optical interconnect applications. This technology is also used in our new Virtex-II Pro™ X FPGAs.

Many of you may be reading Xcell Journal for the first time at Programmable World 2003. Welcome to our world. It’s growing bigger, faster, and better every day. A subscription to XJ is free for the asking (see URL below). We hope you enjoy and gain valuable knowledge from this edition. Much of what we publish is brand new to the world. In our Fall 2003 issue, we will show you what may very well be the beginning of the end of all fixed logic design. But if you just can’t wait for the latest news and information on programmable logic and systems, visit Xcell Online (www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/), where you’ll find frequent reports on what’s happening in the world of programmable logic.

We appreciate your comments and feedback about the printed Xcell Journal and Xcell Online. Send your comments, questions, suggestions, and/or feedback to Editor@xilinx.com.

Tom Durkin
Managing Editor