Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
company that primarily supplied
programmable logic device
A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, a PLD has an undefined function at the time of manuf ...
s. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable
field-programmable gate array
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...
(FPGA) and creating the first
fabless manufacturing
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...
model.
[Jonathan Cassell, iSuppli.]
A Forgettable Year for Memory Chip Makers: iSuppli releases preliminary 2008 semiconductor rankings
." December 1, 2008. Retrieved January 15, 2009.[John Edwards, EDN.]
" June 1, 2006. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Xilinx was co-founded by
Ross Freeman Ross or ROSS may refer to:
People
* Clan Ross, a Highland Scottish clan
* Ross (name), including a list of people with the surname or given name Ross, as well as the meaning
* Earl of Ross, a peerage of Scotland
Places
* RoSS, the Republic of Sout ...
,
Bernard Vonderschmitt
Bernard Valentine Vonderschmitt (October 14, 1923 – June 9, 2004) was an electrical engineer, most noted as a co-founder of leading FPGA producer Xilinx.
Biography
He was born on October 14, 1923 in Jasper, Indiana.
Vonderschmitt graduated wit ...
, and
James V Barnett II in 1984 and the company went public on the
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
in 1990.
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
announced its acquisition of Xilinx in October 2020 and the deal was completed on February 14, 2022 through an all-stock transaction worth an estimated $50 billion.
Company overview
Xilinx was founded in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
in 1984 and headquartered in
San Jose, USA, with additional offices in
Longmont
The City of Longmont is a home rule municipality located in Boulder and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. Longmont is located northeast of the county seat of Boulder and north-northwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Longmont's ...
, USA;
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
, Ireland;
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
;
Hyderabad
Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...
, India;
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
, China;
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
, China;
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
, Australia and
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, Japan.
[Funding Universe.]
Xilinx, Inc.
" Retrieved January 15, 2009.
According to Bill Carter, former CTO and current fellow at Xilinx, the choice of the name Xilinx refers to the chemical symbol for
silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic tab ...
Si.
The "linx" represents programmable links that connect programmable logic blocks together. The 'X's at each end represent the programmable logic blocks.
Xilinx sells a broad range of FPGAs,
complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), design tools, intellectual property and reference designs.
Xilinx customers represent just over half of the entire programmable logic market, at 51%.
Altera
Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.
The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-rang ...
(now
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
) is Xilinx's strongest competitor with 34% of the market. Other key players in this market are
Actel (now
Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets.
In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-base ...
), and
Lattice Semiconductor
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacturing of low power, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Headquartered in the Silicon Forest area of Hillsboro, Oregon, the company ...
.
History
Early history
Ross Freeman Ross or ROSS may refer to:
People
* Clan Ross, a Highland Scottish clan
* Ross (name), including a list of people with the surname or given name Ross, as well as the meaning
* Earl of Ross, a peerage of Scotland
Places
* RoSS, the Republic of Sout ...
,
Bernard Vonderschmitt
Bernard Valentine Vonderschmitt (October 14, 1923 – June 9, 2004) was an electrical engineer, most noted as a co-founder of leading FPGA producer Xilinx.
Biography
He was born on October 14, 1923 in Jasper, Indiana.
Vonderschmitt graduated wit ...
, and
James V Barnett II—all former employees of
Zilog
Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products.
Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...
, an
integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
and solid-state device manufacturer—co-founded Xilinx in 1984 with headquarters in
San Jose, USA.
[Xilinx MediaRoom - Press Releases](_blank)
Press.xilinx.com. Retrieved on 2013-11-20.
While working for Zilog, Freeman wanted to create chips that acted like a blank tape, allowing users to program the technology themselves.
"The concept required lots of
transistors
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
and, at that time, transistors were considered extremely precious—people thought that Ross's idea was pretty far out", said Xilinx Fellow Bill Carter, hired in 1984 to design ICs as Xilinx's eighth employee.
It was at the time more profitable to manufacture generic circuits in massive volumes
than specialized circuits for specific markets.
FPGA
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...
promised to make specialized circuits profitable.
Freeman could not convince Zilog to invest in FPGAs to chase a market then estimated at $100 million,
so he and Barnett left to team up with Vonderschmitt, a former colleague. Together, they raised $4.5 million in
venture
Venture may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
*The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958
*"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes
*''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR
Games
* ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade gam ...
funding
Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses ...
to design the first commercially viable FPGA.
They incorporated the company in 1984 and began selling its first product by 1985.
By late 1987, the company had raised more than $18 million in
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
(equivalent to $ million in ) and was making nearly $14 million a year.
[The Inflation Calculator](_blank)
. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Expansion
From 1988 to 1990, the company's revenue grew each year, from $30 million to $100 million.
During this time, Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI), the company which had been providing funding to Xilinx, was purchased by
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
.
As a result, Xilinx dissolved the deal with MMI and went public on the NASDAQ in 1989.
The company also moved to a plant in San Jose, California, to handle increasingly large orders from
HP,
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
,
IBM and
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
.
Other FPGA makers emerged in the mid-1990s.
By 1995, the company reached $550 million in revenue.
Over the years, Xilinx expanded operations to
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
and
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
.
[Company Release.]
Xilinx Underscores Commitment to China
." November 1, 2006. Retrieved January 15, 2009.EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
Asia.
Xilinx investing $40 million in Singapore operations
." November 16, 2005. Retrieved January 15, 2009.[Pradeep Chakraborty.]
India a high growth area for Xilinx
." August 8, 2008. Retrieved January 15, 2009.[EDB Singapore.]
." December 1, 2007. Retrieved January 15, 2009.
Xilinx's sales rose to $2.53 billion by the end of its fiscal year 2018. Moshe Gavrielov – an
EDA EDA or Eda may refer to:
Computing
* Electronic design automation
* Enterprise Desktop Alliance, a computer technology consortium
* Enterprise digital assistant
* Estimation of distribution algorithm
* Event-driven architecture
* Exploratory ...
and
ASIC
An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...
industry veteran who was appointed president and CEO in early 2008 – introduced targeted design platforms that combine FPGAs with
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
, IP cores, boards and kits to address focused target applications.
[Embedded Technology Journal, ]
Introducing the Xilinx Targeted Design Platform: Fulfilling the Programmable Imperative
.” Retrieved June 10, 2010. These targeted design platforms are an alternative to costly application-specific integrated circuits (
ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs).
[Lou Sosa, Electronic Design.]
PLDs Present The Key To Xilinx's Success
." June 12, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2008.[Mike Santarini, EDN.]
." January 8, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2008.[Ron Wilson, EDN.]
." January 7, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2008.
On January 4, 2018, Victor Peng, the company's COO, replaced Gavrielov as CEO.
[Company Release.]
." Jan 8, 2018
Recent history
![Xilinx logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Xilinx_logo.svg)
In 2011, the company introduced the
Virtex-7 2000T, the first product based on 2.5D stacked silicon (based on
silicon interposer technology) to deliver larger FPGAs than could be built using standard monolithic silicon.
[PR Newswire]
Xilinx ships world's highest capacity FPGA and shatters industry record for number of transistors by 2x
" October 2011. Retrieved May 1st, 2018 Xilinx then adapted the technology to combine formerly separate components in a single chip, first combining an FPGA with transceivers based on heterogeneous process technology to boost bandwidth capacity while using less power.
According to former Xilinx CEO Moshe Gavrielov, the addition of a heterogeneous communications device, combined with the introduction of new software tools and the Zynq-7000 line of 28 nm SoC devices that combine an
ARM core
This is a list of central processing units based on the ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) an ...
with an FPGA, are part of shifting its position from a programmable logic device supplier to one delivering “all things programmable”.
[Electronic Product News.]
Interview with Moshe Gavrielov, president, CEO, Xilinx
." May 15, 2012. Retrieved June 12, 2012.
In addition to Zynq-7000, Xilinx product lines include the
Virtex, Kintex and Artix series, each including configurations and models optimized for different applications.
[DSP-FPGA.com]
Xilinx FPGA Products
.” April 2010. Retrieved June 10, 2010. In April 2012, the company introduced the
Vivado Design Suite - a next-generation
SoC-strength design environment for advanced electronic system designs.
[Brian Bailey, EE Times.]
Second generation for FPGA software
." Apr 25, 2012. Retrieved Dec 21, 2012. In May, 2014, the company shipped the first of the next generation FPGAs: the 20
nm UltraScale.
In September 2017,
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
and Xilinx started a campaign for FPGA adoption. This campaign enables
AWS Marketplace's
Amazon Machine Image
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a special type of virtual appliance that is used to create a virtual machine within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud ("EC2"). It serves as the basic unit of deployment for services delivered using EC2.
Contents
...
s (AMIs) with associated Amazon FPGA Instances created by partners. The two companies released software development tools to simplify the creation of FPGA technology. The tools create and manage the machine images created and sold by partners.
[Karl Freund , ]Forbes (magazine)
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also repo ...
.
Amazon's Xilinx FPGA Cloud: Why This May Be A Significant Milestone
." December 13, 2016. Retrieved April 26, 2018.[Karl Freund , ]Forbes (magazine)
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also repo ...
.
Amazon And Xilinx Deliver New FPGA Solutions
." September 27, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
In July 2018, Xilinx acquired DeepPhi Technology, a Chinese machine learning startup founded in 2016.
In October 2018, the Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGAs and NGCodec's H.265 video encoder were used in a cloud-based video coding service using the
High Efficiency Video Coding
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compar ...
(HEVC). The combination enables video streaming with the same visual quality as that using GPUs, but at 35%-45% lower bitrate.
In November 2018, the company's Zynq UltraScale+ family of multiprocessor system-on-chips was certified to
Safety Integrity Level
Safety integrity level (SIL) is defined as the relative level of risk-reduction provided by a safety function, or to specify a target level of risk reduction. In simple terms, SIL is a measurement of performance required for a safety instrumented ...
(SIL) 3 HFT1 of the
IEC 61508
IEC 61508 is an international standard published by the International Electrotechnical Commission consisting of methods on how to apply, design, deploy and maintain automatic protection systems called safety-related systems. It is titled ''Functio ...
specification.
With this certification, developers are able to use the
MPSoC platform in
AI-based safety- applications of up to SIL 3, in industrial 4.0 platforms of automotive, aerospace, and AI systems. In January 2019, ZF Friedrichshafen AG (ZF) worked with Xilinx's Zynq to power its ProAI automotive control unit, which is used to enable automated driving applications. Xilinx's platform overlooks the aggregation, pre-processing, and distribution of real-time data, and accelerates the AI processing of the unit.
In November 2018, Xilinx migrated its defense-grade XQ UltraScale+ products to TSMC's 16 nm
FinFET
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, f ...
Process. The products included the industry's first Defense-grade heterogeneous multi-processor SoC devices and encompassed the XQ Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCs and RFSoCs as well as XQ UltraScale+ Kintex and Virtex FPGAs. That same month the company expanded its Alveo data center accelerator cards portfolio with the Alveo U280. The initial Alveo line included the U200 and U250, which featured 16 nm UltraScale+ Virtex FPGAs and DDR4 SDRAM. Those two cards were launched in October 2018 at the Xilinx Developer Forum.
At the Forum, Victor Peng, CEO of semiconductor design at Xilinx, and AMD CTO Mark Papermaster, used eight Alveo U250 cards and two AMD Epyc 7551 server CPUs to set a new world record for inference throughput at 30,000 images per second.
Also in November 2018, Xilinx announced that
Dell EMC
Dell EMC (EMC Corporation until 2016) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud c ...
was the first server vendor to qualify its Alveo U200 accelerator card, used to accelerate key HPC and other workloads with select Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. The U280 included support for
high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) and high-performance server interconnect. In August 2019, Xilinx launched the Alveo U50, a low-profile adaptable accelerator with PCIe Gen4 support. The U55C accelerator card was launched in November 2021, designed for
HPCC
HPCC (High-Performance Computing Cluster), also known as DAS (Data Analytics Supercomputer), is an open source, data-intensive computing system platform developed by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The HPCC platform incorporates a software archite ...
and big data workloads by incorporating the
RoCE v2-based clustering solution, allowing for FPGA-based HPCC clustering to be integrated into existing data center infrastructures.
In January 2019
K&L Gates
K&L Gates LLP is an American multinational corporation law firm based in the United States, with international offices in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Its namesake firms are Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, a Pittsburgh-ba ...
, a law firm representing Xilinx sent a
DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
cease and desist
A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...
letter to an
EE YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
r claiming
trademark infringement
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees (provided that such authorization was within the scope of the licence). Infringement may o ...
for featuring the Xilinx logo next to
Altera
Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.
The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-rang ...
's in an educational video. Xilinx refused to reply until a video outlining the legal threat was published, after which they sent an apology e-mail.
In January 2019, Baidu announced that its new edge acceleration computing product, EdgeBoard, was powered by Xilinx. Edgeboard is a part of the Baidu Brain AI Hardware Platform Initiative, which encompasses Baidu's open computing services, and hardware and software products for its edge AI applications. Edgeboard is based on the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, which uses real-time processors together with programmable logic. The Xilinx-based Edgeboard can be used to develop products like smart-video security surveillance solutions, advanced-driver-assistance systems, and next-generation robots.
In February 2019, the company announced two new generations of its Zynq UltraScale+ RF system on chip (RFSoC) portfolio. The device covers the entire sub-6 GHz spectrum, which is necessary for
5G, and the updates included: an extended millimeter wave interface, up to 20% power reduction in the RF data converter subsystem compared to the base portfolio, and support of
5G New Radio. The second generation release covered up to 5 GHz, while the third went up to 6 GHz. As of February, the portfolio was the only adaptable radio platform single chip that had been designed to address the industry's 5G network needs. The second announcement revealed that Xilinx and
Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...
performed the world's first 5G New Radio (NR) commercial deployment in
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
.
The two companies developed and deployed 5G Massive Multiple-input, Multiple-output (m-MIMO) and millimeter wave (mmWave) products using Xilinx's UltraScale+ platform.
The capabilities are essential for 5G commercialization.
The companies also announced collaboration on Xilinx's Versal adaptable compute acceleration platform (ACAP) products that will deliver 5G services. In February 2019, Xilinx introduced an HDMI 2.1 IP subsystem core, which enabled the company's devices to transmit, receive, and process up to 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels) UHD video in media players, cameras, monitors, LED walls, projectors, and kernel-based virtual machines.
In April 2019, Xilinx entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Solarflare Communications, Inc.
Xilinx became a strategic investor in Solarflare in 2017.
The companies have been collaborating since then on advanced networking technology, and in March 2019 demonstrated their first joint solution: a single-chip FPGA-based 100G
NIC. The acquisition enables Xilinx to combine its FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Solarflare's NIC technology.
In August 2019, Xilinx announced that the company would be adding the world's largest FPGA - the Virtex Ultrascale+ VU19P, to the 16 nm Virtex Ultrascale+ family. The VU19P contains 35 billion transistors.
In June 2019, Xilinx announced that it was shipping its first Versal chips. Using ACAP, the chips’ hardware and software can be programmed to run almost any kind of AI software. On October 1, 2019, Xilinx announced the launch of Vitis, a unified software platform that helps developers take advantage of hardware adaptability.
In 2019, Xilinx exceeded $3 billion in annual revenues for the first time, announcing revenues of $3.06 billion, up 24% from the prior fiscal year. Revenues were $828 million for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2019, up 4% from the prior quarter and up 30% year over year. Xilinx's Communications sector represented 41% of the revenue; the industrial, aerospace and defense sectors represented 27%; the Data Center and Test, Measurement & Emulation (TME) sectors accounted for 18%; and the automotive, broadcast and consumer markets contributed 14%.
In August 2020,
Subaru
( or ; ) is the automaker, automobile manufacturing division of Japanese transportation conglomerate (company), conglomerate Subaru Corporation (formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries), the Automotive industry#By manufacturer, twenty-first ...
announced the use of one of Xilinx's chips as processing power for camera images in its driver-assistance system. In September 2020, Xilinx announced its new chipset, the T1 Telco Accelerator card, that can be used for units running on an open RAN 5G network.
On October 27, 2020,
AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...
reached an agreement to acquire Xilinx in a stock-swap deal, valuing the company at $35 billion. The deal was expected to close by the end of 2021. Their stockholders approved the acquisition on April 7, 2021. The deal was completed on February 14, 2022. Since the acquisition was completed, all Xilinx products are co-branded as ''AMD Xilinx''.
In December 2020, Xilinx announced they were acquiring the assets of Falcon Computing Systems to enhance the Vitis platform.
In April 2021, Xilinx announced a collaboration with
Mavenir
HRMavenir Systems, Inc. dba Mavenir is an American telecommunications software company, created in 2017 as a result of a three-way merger of existing companies and technologies, that develops and supplies cloud-native software to the communicat ...
to boost cell phone tower capacity for open
5G networks. That same month, the company unveiled the Kria portfolio, a line of small form factor
system-on-modules (SOMs) that come with a pre-built software stack to simplify development. In June, Xilinx announced it was acquiring German software developer Silexica, for an undisclosed amount.
Technology
![Xilinx Spartan-3E (XC3S500E)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Xilinx_Spartan-3E_%28XC3S500E%29.jpg)
Xilinx designs and develops programmable logic products, including integrated circuits (ICs), software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as intellectual property (IP) cores, design services, customer training, field engineering and technical support.
Xilinx sells both FPGAs and CPLDs for electronic equipment manufacturers in end markets such as
communications
Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
, industrial,
consumer
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. T ...
,
automotive and
data processing
Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information.
Data processing is a form of ''information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an ...
.
Xilinx's FPGAs have been used for the
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at the
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
European laboratory on the
French-
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
border to map and disentangle the trajectories of thousands of
subatomic particles
In physical sciences, a subatomic particle is a particle that composes an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a prot ...
. Xilinx has also engaged in a partnership with the
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate to develop FPGAs to withstand the damaging effects of radiation in space, which are 1,000 times less sensitive to space radiation than the commercial equivalent, for deployment in new satellites.
[By Michael Kleinman, US Airforce News. ]
New computer chip cuts costs, adds efficiency to space systems.
September 21, 2010. Retrieved September 23, 2010. Xilinx FPGAs can run a regular embedded OS (such as
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
or
vxWorks
VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determin ...
) and can implement processor peripherals in programmable logic.
The Virtex-II Pro, Virtex-4, Virtex-5, and Virtex-6 FPGA families, which include up to two embedded IBM PowerPC cores, are targeted to the needs of
system-on-chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...
(SoC) designers.
Xilinx's IP cores include IP for simple functions (
BCD encoders, counters, etc.), for domain specific cores (
digital signal processing
Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...
,
FFT
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in the ...
and
FIR cores) to complex systems (multi-gigabit networking cores, the MicroBlaze soft microprocessor and the compact Picoblaze microcontroller).
Xilinx also creates custom cores for a fee.
The main design toolkit Xilinx provides engineers is the
Vivado Design Suite, an integrated design environment (IDE) with a system-to-IC level tools built on a shared scalable data model and a common debug environment. Vivado includes electronic system level (ESL) design tools for synthesizing and verifying C-based algorithmic IP; standards based packaging of both algorithmic and RTL IP for reuse; standards based IP stitching and systems integration of all types of system building blocks; and the verification of blocks and systems. A free version WebPACK Edition of Vivado provides designers with a limited version of the design environment.
Xilinx's Embedded Developer's Kit (EDK) supports the embedded
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
405 and 440 cores (in Virtex-II Pro and some Virtex-4 and -5 chips) and the
Microblaze core. Xilinx's System Generator for DSP implements DSP designs on Xilinx FPGAs. A freeware version of its EDA software called ISE WebPACK is used with some of its non-high-performance chips. Xilinx is the only (as of 2007) FPGA vendor to distribute a native Linux freeware synthesis toolchain.
[Ken Cheung, EDA Geek. ]
Xilinx Rolls Out Embedded Development Kit 9.li
.” March 26, 2007. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
Xilinx announced the architecture for a new
ARM Cortex-A9
The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.
Features
Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are:
* ...
-based platform for embedded systems designers, that combines the software programmability of an embedded processor with the hardware flexibility of an FPGA.
[Rich Nass, ]EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
.
Xilinx puts ARM core into its FPGAs
." April 27, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2011.[Steve Leibson, Design-Reuse.]
." May 3, 2010. Retrieved February 15, 2011. The new architecture abstracts much of the hardware burden away from the embedded software developers' point of view, giving them an unprecedented level of control in the development process.
[Toni McConnel, ]EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
.
Xilinx Extensible Processing Platform combines best of serial and parallel processing
." April 28, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2011.[Ken Cheung, FPGA Blog.]
Xilinx Extensible Processing Platform for Embedded Systems
." April 27, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2011. With this platform, software developers can leverage their existing system code based on ARM technology and utilize vast off-the-shelf open-source and commercially available software component libraries.
Because the system boots an OS at reset, software development can get under way quickly within familiar development and debug environments using tools such as ARM's RealView development suite and related third-party tools, Eclipse-based IDEs, GNU, the Xilinx Software Development Kit and others.
In early 2011, Xilinx began shipping the Zynq-7000 SoC platform immerses ARM multi-cores, programmable logic fabric, DSP data paths, memories and I/O functions in a dense and configurable mesh of interconnect.
[Colin Holland, ]EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
.
Xilinx provides details on ARM-based devices
." March 1, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2011.[Laura Hopperton, Newelectronics.]
Embedded world: Xilinx introduces 'industry's first' extensible processing platform
." March 1, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2011. The platform targets embedded designers working on market applications that require multi-functionality and real-time responsiveness, such as automotive driver assistance, intelligent video surveillance, industrial automation, aerospace and defense, and next-generation wireless.
Following the introduction of its 28 nm 7-series FPGAs, Xilinx revealed that several of the highest-density parts in those FPGA product lines will be constructed using multiple dies in one package, employing technology developed for 3D construction and stacked-die assemblies.
[EDN Europe.]
." November 1, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2011. The company's stacked silicon interconnect (SSI) technology stacks several (three or four) active FPGA dies side by side on a silicon
interposer
An interposer is an electrical interface routing between one socket or connection to another. The purpose of an interposer is to spread a connection to a wider pitch or to reroute a connection to a different connection.
Interposer comes from t ...
– a single piece of silicon that carries passive interconnect. The individual FPGA dies are conventional, and are flip-chip mounted by microbumps on to the interposer. The interposer provides direct interconnect between the FPGA dies, with no need for transceiver technologies such as high-speed
SerDes
{{Use American English, date = March 2019
A Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) is a pair of functional blocks commonly used in high speed communications to compensate for limited input/output. These blocks convert data between serial data and paral ...
.
[ In October 2011, Xilinx shipped the first FPGA to use the new technology, the Virtex-7 2000T FPGA, which includes 6.8 billion transistors and 20 million ASIC gates.][Don Clark, The Wall Street Journal.]
Xilinx Says Four Chips Act Like One Giant
." October 25, 2011. Retrieved November 18, 2011.[Clive Maxfield, EETimes.]
Xilinx tips world’s highest capacity FPGA
." October 25, 2011. Retrieved November 18, 2011.[David Manners, Electronics Weekly.]
." October 25, 2011. Retrieved November 18, 2011.[Tim Pietruck, SciEngines GmbH.]
." December 21, 2011 - RIVYERA-V7 2000T FPGA computer with the newest and largest Xilinx Virtex-7 The following spring, Xilinx used 3D technology to ship the Virtex-7 HT, the industry's first heterogeneous FPGAs, which combine high bandwidth FPGAs with a maximum of sixteen 28 Gbit/s and seventy-two 13.1 Gbit/s transceivers to reduce power and size requirements for key Nx100G and 400G line card applications and functions.
In January 2011, Xilinx acquired design tool firm AutoESL Design Technologies and added System C high-level design for its 6- and 7-series FPGA families.[Dylan McGrath, ]EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
.
Xilinx buys high-level synthesis EDA vendor
." January 31, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2011. The addition of AutoESL tools extended the design community for FPGAs to designers more accustomed to designing at a higher level of abstraction using C, C++ and System C.[Richard Wilson, ElectronicsWeekly.com.]
." January 31, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2011.
In April 2012, Xilinx introduced a revised version of its toolset for programmable systems, called Vivado Design Suite. This IP and system-centric design software supports newer high capacity devices, and speeds the design of programmable logic and I/O. Vivado provides faster integration and implementation for programmable systems into devices with 3D stacked silicon interconnect technology, ARM processing systems, analog mixed signal (AMS), and many semiconductor intellectual property (IP) cores.[EDN.]
The Vivado Design Suite accelerates programmable systems integration and implementation by up to 4X
." Jun 15, 2012. Retrieved Jan 3, 2013.
In July 2019, Xilinx acquired NGCodec, developers of FPGA
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...
accelerated video encoders for video streaming
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
, cloud gaming
Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or gaming-as-a-service or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game rem ...
and cloud mixed reality
Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time. Mixed reality is largely synony ...
services. NGCodec video encoders include support for H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, VP9
VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.
VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265).
At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. ...
and AV1
AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 th ...
, with planned future support for H.266/VVC and AV2
Av (also Menachem Av, ; from Akkadian ''ʾAbū'' "father") is the eleventh month of the civil year and the fifth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. The name comes from Araḫ Abu, "month of Abu", from the Babylonian calenda ...
.
In May 2020, Xilinx installed its first Adaptive Compute Cluster (XACC) at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. The XACCs provide infrastructure and funding to support research in adaptive compute acceleration for high performance computing (HPC). The clusters include high-end servers, Xilinx Alveo accelerator cards, and high speed networking. Three other XACCs will be installed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC); and the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Family lines of products
Before 2010, Xilinx offered two main FPGA families: the high-performance Virtex series and the high-volume Spartan series, with a cheaper EasyPath option for ramping to volume production. The company also provides two CPLD lines: the CoolRunner and the 9500 series. Each model series has been released in multiple generations since its launch.[Stephen Brown and Johnathan Rose, University of Toronto. ]
Architecture of FPGAs and CPLDs: A Tutorial
.” Retrieved June 10, 2010. With the introduction of its 28 nm FPGAs in June 2010, Xilinx replaced the high-volume Spartan family with the Kintex family and the low-cost Artix family.EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
.
Xilinx to offer three classes of FPGAs at 28-nm
.” June 21, 2010. Retrieved September 23, 2010.[Kevin Morris, FPGA Journal. ]
Veni! Vidi! Virtex! (and Kintex and Artix Too)
.” June 21, 2010. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
Xilinx's newer FPGA products use a High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process, which reduces static power consumption while increasing logic capacity.[Daniel Harris, Electronic Design. ]
If Only the Original Spartans Could Have Thrived On So Little Power
.” February 27, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2008. In 28 nm devices, static power accounts for much and sometimes most of the total power dissipation. Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families are said to consume 50 percent less power, and have up to twice the logic capacity compared to the previous generation of Xilinx FPGAs.[Peter Clarke, ]EE Times
''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016.
Since its acquisition ...
,
Xilinx launches Spartan-6, Virtex-6 FPGAs
." February 2, 2009. Retrieved February 2, 2009[Ron Wilson, EDN,]
." February 2, 2009. Retrieved on February 2, 2009.
In June 2010, Xilinx introduced the Xilinx 7 series: the Virtex-7, Kintex-7, and Artix-7 families, promising improvements in system power, performance, capacity, and price. These new FPGA families are manufactured using TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...
's 28 nm HKMG process.[Brent Przybus, Xilinx,]
Xilinx Redefines Power, Performance, and Design Productivity with Three New 28 nm FPGA Families: Virtex-7, Kintex-7, and Artix-7 Devices
." June 21, 2010. Retrieved on June 22, 2010. The 28 nm series 7 devices feature a 50 percent power reduction compared to the company's 40 nm devices and offer capacity of up to 2 million logic cells. Less than one year after announcing the 7 series 28 nm FPGAs, Xilinx shipped the world's first 28 nm FPGA device, the Kintex-7. In March 2011, Xilinx introduced the Zynq-7000 family, which integrates a complete ARM Cortex-A9
The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.
Features
Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are:
* ...
MPCore processor-based system on a 28 nm FPGA for system architects and embedded software developers. In May 2017, Xilinx expanded the 7 Series with the production of the Spartan-7 family.[Company Release.]
Xilinx Announces the Spartan-7 FPGA Family
." November 19, 2015.[Company Release.]
." May 09, 2017.
In Dec, 2013, Xilinx introduced the UltraScale series: Virtex UltraScale and Kintex UltraScale families. These new FPGA families are manufactured by TSMC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...
in its 20 nm planar process. At the same time it announced an UltraScale SoC architecture, called Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC, in TSMC 16 nm FinFET process.
In March 2021, Xilinx announced a new cost-optimized portfolio with Artix and Zynq UltraScale+ devices, fabricated on TSMC's 16 nm process.
Virtex family
The Virtex series of FPGAs have integrated features that include FIFO and ECC logic, DSP blocks, PCI-Express controllers, Ethernet MAC blocks, and high-speed transceivers. In addition to FPGA logic, the Virtex series includes embedded fixed function hardware for commonly used functions such as multipliers, memories, serial transceivers and microprocessor cores.[Ron Wilson, EDN.]
Xilinx FPGA introductions hint at new realities
." February 2, 2009 Retrieved June 10, 2010. These capabilities are used in applications such as wired and wireless infrastructure equipment, advanced medical equipment, test and measurement, and defense systems.[Design & Reuse.]
." February 2, 2009. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
The Virtex 7 family, is based on a 28 nm design and is reported to deliver a two-fold system performance improvement at 50 percent lower power compared to previous generation Virtex-6 devices. In addition, Virtex-7 doubles the memory bandwidth compared to previous generation Virtex FPGAs with 1866 Mbit/s memory interfacing performance and over two million logic cells.
In 2011, Xilinx began shipping sample quantities of the Virtex-7 2000T "3D FPGA", which combines four smaller FPGAs into a single package by placing them on a special silicon interconnection pad (called an interposer) to deliver 6.8 billion transistors in a single large chip. The interposer provides 10,000 data pathways between the individual FPGAs – roughly 10 to 100 times more than would usually be available on a board – to create a single FPGA. In 2012, using the same 3D technology, Xilinx introduced initial shipments of their Virtex-7 H580T FPGA, a heterogeneous device, so called because it comprises two FPGA dies and one 8-channel 28Gbit/s transceiver die in the same package.
The Virtex-6 family is built on a 40 nm process for compute-intensive electronic systems, and the company claims it consumes 15 percent less power and has 15 percent improved performance over competing 40 nm FPGAs.
The Virtex-5 LX and the LXT are intended for logic-intensive applications, and the Virtex-5 SXT is for DSP applications. With the Virtex-5, Xilinx changed the logic fabric from four-input LUTs to six-input LUTs. With the increasing complexity of combinational logic functions required by SoC designs, the percentage of combinational paths requiring multiple four-input LUTs had become a performance and routing bottleneck. The six-input LUT represented a tradeoff between better handling of increasingly complex combinational functions, at the expense of a reduction in the absolute number of LUTs per device. The Virtex-5 series is a 65 nm design fabricated in 1.0 V, triple-oxide process technology.[National Instruments.]
Advantages of the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA
." June 17, 2009. Retrieved June 29, 2010.
Legacy Virtex devices (Virtex, Virtex-II, Virtex-II Pro, Virtex 4) are still available, but are not recommended for use in new designs.
Kintex
The Kintex-7 family is the first Xilinx mid-range FPGA family that the company claims delivers Virtex-6 family performance at less than half the price while consuming 50 percent less power. The Kintex family includes high-performance 12.5 Gbit/s or lower-cost optimized 6.5 Gbit/s serial connectivity, memory, and logic performance required for applications such as high volume 10G optical wired communication equipment, and provides a balance of signal processing performance, power consumption and cost to support the deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless networks.
In August 2018, SK Telecom deployed Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGAs as their artificial intelligence accelerators at their data centers in South Korea. The FPGAs run SKT's automatic speech-recognition application to accelerate Nugu, SKT's voice-activated assistant.
In July, 2020 Xilinx made the latest addition to their Kintex family, 'KU19P FPGA' which delivers more logic fabric and embedded memory
Artix
The Artix-7 family delivers 50 percent lower power and 35 percent lower cost compared to the Spartan-6 family and is based on the unified Virtex-series architecture. The Artix family is designed to address the small form factor and low-power performance requirements of battery-powered portable ultrasound equipment, commercial digital camera lens control, and military avionics and communications equipment. With the introduction of the Spartan-7 family in 2017, which lack high-bandwidth transceivers, the Artix-7's was clarified as being the "transceiver optimized" member.[Company Website.]
." Retrieved July 5, 2017.
Zynq
The Zynq-7000 family of SoCs
SOCS (suppressor of cytokine signaling proteins) refers to a family of genes involved in inhibiting the JAK-STAT signaling pathway.
Genes
* CISH
* SOCS1
* SOCS2
* SOCS3
* SOCS4
* SOCS5
* SOCS6
* SOCS7
Suppressor of cytokine signaling 7 is a pro ...
addresses high-end embedded-system applications, such as video surveillance, automotive-driver assistance, next-generation wireless, and factory automation.[Mike Demler, EDN.]
Xilinx integrates dual ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore with 28-nm, low-power programmable logic
." March 1, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
Zynq-7000 integrate a complete ARM Cortex-A9
The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.
Features
Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are:
* ...
MPCore-processor-based 28 nm system. The Zynq architecture differs from previous marriages of programmable logic and embedded processors by moving from an FPGA-centric platform to a processor-centric model. For software developers, Zynq-7000 appear the same as a standard, fully featured ARM processor-based system-on-chip (SOC), booting immediately at power-up and capable of running a variety of operating systems independently of the programmable logic. In 2013, Xilinx introduced the Zynq-7100, which integrates digital signal processing
Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...
(DSP) to meet emerging programmable systems integration requirements of wireless, broadcast, medical and military applications.
The new Zynq-7000 product family posed a key challenge for system designers, because Xilinx ISE design software had not been developed to handle the capacity and complexity of designing with an FPGA with an ARM core. Xilinx's new Vivado Design Suite addressed this issue, because the software was developed for higher capacity FPGAs, and it included high level synthesis
High-level synthesis (HLS), sometimes referred to as C synthesis, electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis, algorithmic synthesis, or behavioral synthesis, is an automated design process that takes an abstract behavioral specification of a digital ...
(HLS) functionality that allows engineers to compile the co-processors from a C-based description.[
The ]AXIOM
An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...
, the world's first digital cinema camera
A digital movie camera for digital cinematography is a video camera that captures footage digitally rather than the historically used movie camera, which shoots on film stock. Different digital movie cameras output a variety of different acquisit ...
that is open source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and ...
, contains a Zynq-7000.
Spartan family
The Spartan series targets low cost, high-volume applications with a low-power footprint e.g. displays
A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form (the latter used for example in tactile electronic displays for blind people). When the input information that is supplied has an electrical signal the ...
, set-top boxes
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
, wireless router
A wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the manufacturer and mode ...
s and other applications.[Daniel Harris, Electronic Design.]
If only the original spartans could have thrived on so little power
." February 27, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2008.
The Spartan-6 family is built on a 45 nm, 9-metal layer, dual-oxide process technology.[Company Release.]
The low-cost Spartan-6 FPGA family delivers an optimal balance of low risk, low cost, low power, and high performance
." February 2, 2009. The Spartan-6 was marketed in 2009 as a low-cost option for automotive, wireless communications, flat-panel display and video surveillance applications.
The Spartan-7 family, built on the same 28 nm process used in the other 7-Series FPGAs, was announced in 2015, and became available in 2017. Unlike the Artix-7 family and the "LXT" members of the Spartan-6 family, the Spartan-7 FPGAs lack high-bandwidth transceivers.
EasyPath
Because EasyPath devices are identical to the FPGAs that customers are already using the parts can be produced faster and more reliably from the time they are ordered compared to similar competing programs.
Versal
Versal is Xilinx's 7 nm architecture that targets heterogeneous computing
Heterogeneous computing refers to systems that use more than one kind of processor or cores. These systems gain performance or energy efficiency not just by adding the same type of processors, but by adding dissimilar coprocessors, usually incorp ...
needs in datacenter acceleration applications, in artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
acceleration at the edge
Edge or EDGE may refer to:
Technology Computing
* Edge computing, a network load-balancing system
* Edge device, an entry point to a computer network
* Adobe Edge, a graphical development application
* Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...
, Internet of Things
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
(IoT) applications and embedded computing.
The Everest program focuses on the Versal Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (ACAP), a product category combining a traditional FPGA fabric with an ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
system on chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...
and a set of coprocessor
A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography o ...
s, connected through a network on a chip
A network on a chip or network-on-chip (NoC or )This article uses the convention that "NoC" is pronounced . Therefore, it uses the convention "a" for the indefinite article corresponding to NoC ("a NoC"). Other sources may pronounce it as an ...
.[Xilinx ships first Versal ACAP chips that adapt to AI programs]
." June 18, 2019. Retrieved Feb 26, 2020. Xilinx's goal was to reduce the barriers to adoption of FPGAs for accelerated compute-intensive datacenter workloads.[Karl Freund , ]Forbes (magazine)
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also repo ...
.
Xilinx Everest: Enabling FPGA Acceleration With ACAP
." March 26, 2018. Retrieved April 26, 2018. They are designed for a wide range of applications in the fields of big data
Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
and machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
, including video transcoding, database querying, data compression, search, AI inferencing, machine vision
Machine vision (MV) is the technology and methods used to provide imaging-based automatic inspection and analysis for such applications as automatic inspection, process control, and robot guidance, usually in industry. Machine vision refers to m ...
, computer vision
Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...
, autonomous vehicles
Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle (car, aircraft, watercraft, or otherwise).Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Lanzon, A.,Group Coordinated Control o ...
, genomics
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...
, computational storage and network acceleration.
On April 15, 2020, it was announced that Xilinx would supply its Versal chips to Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...
for 5G networking equipment. In July 2021, Xilinx debuted the Versal HBM, which combines the network interface of the platform with HBM2e memory to alleviate data bottlenecking.
See also
* AI accelerator
An AI accelerator is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, including artificial neural networks and machine vision. Typical applications in ...
* Altera
Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.
The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-rang ...
* High speed serial link
High Speed Serial Link (HSSL) is a proprietary communications protocol and was primarily developed by Alcatel. It is now owned by Alcatel-Lucent.
Capable of transmitting data at rates up to 10 Gbit/s, HSSL is chiefly used in electronic sy ...
* List of Xilinx FPGAs
Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the ...
References
External links
*
{{authority control, state=expanded
AMD
1990 initial public offerings
1984 establishments in California
2022 mergers and acquisitions
American brands
American companies established in 1984
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
American corporate subsidiaries
Electronics companies established in 1984
Fabless semiconductor companies
Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California
Semiconductor companies of the United States
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area