Xilinx Announces Up to 41 Percent Price Reductions on ISP CPLDS; Price Reductions Places Xilinx as the Price Per Macrocell Leader

Business Wire, Sept 2, 1997

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 2, 1997--Reaffirming its commitment to be the price leader for complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), Xilinx Inc.(NASDAQ:XLNX) today announced further price reductions of up to 41 percent for selected XC9500 in-system programming (ISP) CPLDs.

The new prices are effective immediately. This price reduction is the third in nine months totaling up to 65 percent price reduction on XC9500 devices. The company said it has made significant strides in reducing manufacturing costs for the XC9500 devices with the aggressive Flash process migration and manufacturing improvements to allow Xilinx to pass further cost reductions on to the customers.

"Design wins for the XC9500 CPLDs are at an all-time high and have doubled from the last quarter," said Evert Wolsheimer, vice president and general manager of the Xilinx CPLD business unit. "We offer a clear price advantage in both absolute terms, but also in price per macrocell over our competition. The XC9500 family combined with the new Foundation and Alliance Series software is the most aggressively priced digital design solution." -0-

                     NEW XILINX XC9500 PRICING

Device    Package       100-unit        Volume        Price per
                         Price          Price (1)     macrocell

XC9536  44-pin VQFP      $3.05           $1.20         $0.033
XC9572  44 pin PLCC      $3.20           $1.85         $0.026
XC95108 84-pin PLCC      $8.05           $4.95         $0.046
XC95216 160-pin PQFP     $23.65          $15.70        $0.073
XC95288 208-pin HQFP     $65.50          $24.90        $0.086

(1) 2H 98

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T*

    "Further, when compared to prices currently offered on some
simple PLDs (SPLDs), like 22V10 devices, the XC9500 devices are a
more affordable solution for price and board real estate," continued
Wolsheimer.  "Three, 10-macrocell 22V10 devices for a total of $2.55
can be easily replaced by one Xilinx 36-macrocell XC9536 device for
$1.20 -- less than half the cost.  This solution and aggressive pricing
should accelerate the decline of the SPLD market."
    The Xilinx XC9500 ISP family, with logic densities ranging from
36 to 288 macrocells and speeds of five-nanosecond pin-to-pin
operation, features a superior pin-locking solution, and support for
industry-standard JTAG instructions for performing functional and
interconnect tests of the chips on circuit boards.  Many high-volume
applications use Xilinx XC9500 CPLDs, such as add-in boards for PC
peripherals, digital video disk (DV) cards, servers,
telecommunication switches, routers, hubs, video games, and
industrial controls.

Platforms, pricing and availability

    Foundation Series 1.3 software is available for popular PC
platforms and supports both the Windows 95, Windows NT operating
systems.  New Foundation Series pricing starts at $495.  Alliance
Series 1.3 software is available for both popular PC and workstation
platforms and operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows NT and
Sun OS, Solaris, HP-UX.  New Alliance Series pricing starts at $495
on PCs and $3,995 on workstations.  Evaluation software is available
for both the Alliance and Foundation Series software for $99.
    Founded in 1984, Xilinx is the world's largest supplier of
programmable logic solutions comprising industry leading device
architectures and world-class design software.  Headquartered in San
Jose, Calif., the company pioneered the market for field programmable
gate array (FPGA) semiconductor devices that provide high integration
and quick time-to-market for electronic equipment manufacturers in
the computer, peripherals, telecommunications, networking, industrial
control, instrumentation, consumer electronics, and high
reliability/military markets.  For more information on Xilinx, access
the World Wide Web site at www.xilinx.com .
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    Note to Editors: Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc.
All XC-prefix product designations, Foundation and Alliance are
trademarks of Xilinx, Inc.