When the Xilinx founders created their first business plan in 1984, they agreed on a lofty goal: “To be the leading company designing, manufacturing, marketing, and supporting user-configurable logic arrays for the application-specific market.”

In 1984 when Xilinx was founded, configurable logic arrays were viewed as exotic curiosities, the semiconductor industry was mired in a slump, and the personal computer – destined to become the driving force in silicon consumption – had just been introduced to skeptical reviews. That’s why many people thought that Xilinx founders Ross Freeman, Bernie Vonderschmitt, and Jim Barnett were overly ambitious with their written missive. But the driving force in their plans was the goal of leadership – that sometimes vague, often elusive goal that all high technology companies seek but few ever attain.

Today, everyone in the industry knows that the Xilinx founders made good on their promise. As we enter our third decade as the preeminent supplier of programmable logic devices (owning more than 50 percent of the market), we increasingly find that our technology is the preferred choice for most digital logic designs. By almost any definition, Xilinx is setting a new standard for success.

Indeed, today’s stated vision makes our founding fathers’ objective seem comparatively tame. As Xilinx celebrates its 20th year in business, our market leadership is unquestioned and our current goal stretches far into uncharted territory: “To put a programmable device in every piece of electronic equipment within the next 10 years.” This guiding principle is etched into the mind of every Xilinx employee around the world, and is the emotional force behind the steady stream of innovation and operational excellence for which Xilinx is known.

Leadership Starts from Within
Talk to our CEO Wim Roelandts about leadership, and you won’t hear a lot about market share dominance, a litany of industry firsts, or impressive statistics that typify most companies’ definitions of what it means to be a leader. Instead, Wim speaks passionately about core values, management philosophy, corporate culture, and building a legacy. That’s why the second Xilinx company goal is: “To build a company that sets a new standard for managing high-tech companies.” Xilinx was named The Best Managed Semiconductor Company by Forbes magazine in 2004, just one indicator that this goal is now a reality.

Wim’s own style draws upon his years of experience at Hewlett-Packard, something of a high-tech pioneer itself in terms of corporate culture with its legendary “HP Way.” But he makes it clear that his team’s goal for Xilinx is a new, unique style of management: one that combines the best of traditional hard-driving, top-down, win-at-all-costs approaches with “softer,” consensus-oriented, people-centric models. And he insists you can have the best of both worlds. “We have a culture where people are treated with respect, where there is consensus management, and still we are a leader. How do we do it? Through innovation! We have a process that fosters innovation, and with innovation comes leadership.”

VP of Human Resources Peg Wynn describes the competitive attitude at Xilinx like this: “We’re fierce competitors with hearts of gold.” That competitive attitude has led to no shortage of innovation and industry firsts at Xilinx during its first 20 years, as more than 900 patents attest. Such a record of achievement is the result of a well-thought-out process to inspire employees to greatness, with a business model that allows the company to focus on what it does best.

A Holistic Management Philosophy
Xilinx leadership is based on its ability to continuously innovate. Therefore, its management philosophy is based on simple tenets:

• People want to do a good job and they come to Xilinx to do their best work
• Work has to have meaning and value
• The company must provide a sense of community
• There must be an opportunity for personal growth
• Everyone should be an owner.

Wim talks a lot about the importance of walking the talk, or as he puts it, “maintaining consistency and credibility” with the employee base as well as with the company’s other stakeholders: partners, customers, and shareholders. It’s one reason why he is fanatical about returning e-mails from employees, and moves his office every year to a new location “to get a different perspective on the company.” Such an attitude underpins a sense of values and integrity that has led Xilinx to be voted the “Most Respected Public Company” by its peers in the Fabless Semiconductor Organization (FSA) two years in a row, as well as earn us a top-10 rating in Fortune magazine’s “Best Places To Work” for the last four years.

Innovation and Leadership
Xilinx has put the structure in place to make all employees and partners successful. It begins with focus. From our inception in 1984, Xilinx strategy has relied on a partnership model through which we develop mutually beneficial relationships with experts in manufacturing, sales, and other activities that are impractical for us to do ourselves. For example, company founder Bernie Vonderschmitt essentially invented the fabless semiconductor model on a handshake agreement with Seiko in 1984. That agreement saw the first Xilinx-designed chips roll off the manufacturing lines at Seiko’s plants. Today, Xilinx relies – and in fact, drives forward – our manufacturing partners as we reach new milestones together.

Since 1984, Xilinx has developed an extensive and growing “ecosystem” of partnerships for a wide variety of needs. We partner with experts in sales, design tools, intellectual property cores, and chip design services – a strategy that has allowed an unwavering focus on our own areas of core competence: designing, marketing, and supporting our programmable chips. “You can only be a leader in a few areas so you have to define where you want to be a leader and use partners to complement what you do,” says Wim. “We want to be a leader in technology and in innovation. To do that, we need partners and there always has to be something in it for the partner – it has to make them better. Our philosophy on partnerships is that it should minimally be a ratio of 51 to 49, in favor of our partner.”

The Xilinx track record of innovation is impressive. Since inventing the FPGA in 1984, Xilinx has progressively achieved new technological milestones ahead of its competition, and set new standards for semiconductor design. Most recently, we were the first to produce production devices in 90 nm process geometries. Along with Intel™, we are also producing the most chips on state-of-the-art 300 mm wafers – both testaments to the design prowess of our engineering teams. Not content to rest on our laurels or follow trends, Xilinx management proudly points to the ratio of employees working on future business activities: about three-quarters of the company.

“Being a leader means taking risks,” says VP of Marketing Sandeep Vij. “And the culture here at Xilinx rewards risk-taking. The whole concept behind our technology – programmability – was based on a giant risk by the founders. That’s what inspires innovation. Because of the way we are set up, every employee feels like an owner, people feel like they are part of a team; they’re part of something beyond an individual contribution.” And with innovation comes leadership, although it’s not always an overnight effect.

In fact, Sandeep looks at the first 20 years of Xilinx in two distinct phases. First was the decade that saw the first few generations of products take shape; market adoption of programmable technology happened on a gradual basis. Next came the decade when Xilinx products became more mainstream; new milestones were reached – including one million devices shipped, one billion transistors on a chip, and $1 billion in revenue. “Leadership is different than being a winner,” Sandeep notes. “In our view of the world, there can be more than one winner – in fact, that’s required because we want our partners to win too.

There are a lot of intangibles in being a leader. A leader evokes respect. A leader inspires people to follow. A leader has to look at what’s happening today and see its impact on the future. That’s what the founders of Xilinx did 20 years ago, and that’s what we must continuously do now.”

Leading the Way to the Future
Wim likes to call Xilinx a reconfigurable company, a tribute not just to the innovative technology the company delivers to a wide range of electronics companies, but also to the flexible management style that he sees as essential to survival in high technology. “The challenge is in keeping Xilinx nimble and responsive. Every day we change. Whether it’s the technology, a business process, or our geographical focus, we have to be comfortable with change. And we have to continue to re-innovate from within.” What else would you expect from the company that invented programmable chips?

Original Xilinx Mission Statement 1984 To be the leading company designing, manufacturing, marketing, and supporting user-configurable logic arrays for the application-specific market. Xilinx’s strategies to be the leading company are: Maximize our strengths in product architecture and design Complement our strengths with a long-term fab partner who has high quality, high volume, competitive cost capability, and state-of-the-art process technology Provide a logic solution that is easier to design-in and more cost-effective than SSI/MSI, PALS, and gate arrays with densities of 4,000 to 5,000 unit cells Provide support for all user volumes with both softwired and hardwired products Develop and support design tools to minimize the customer’s design efforts

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