Xilinx Simplifies Embedded System Design With New Integrated PowerPC And MicroBlaze Development Kit

Xilinx Award-Winning Platform Studio, High Performance Virtex-4 FX FPGA Board, PowerPC and MicroBlaze Processor Designs Available in Single Easy-to-Use Kit

BOSTON, Mass. , September 13, 2005 – Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today released the PowerPC™ and MicroBlaze™ Development Kit, Virtex™-4 FX12 Edition, a comprehensive design environment with everything embedded developers need to create processor-based systems. The FX12 Edition delivers an integrated platform with hardware, design tools, intellectual property (IP) and reference designs to kick start the development process. Developers can select the processor(s) best suited for the target application and rapidly configure complete systems with a single, easy-to-use kit. The new development kit is being showcased this week during the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, September 12-14, 2005.

“Creating a new, real-time embedded system can be quite a challenge today, especially if you are designing your own custom hardware, software and firmware,” said Mark Aaldering, vice president of the Embedded Processing and IP Divisions at Xilinx. “The completely integrated development environment of the Virtex™-4 FX12 Edition will rapidly accelerate the embedded design process.”

Complete Development Kit
The PowerPC and MicroBlaze Development Kit, Virtex-4 FX12 Edition, supports both the PowerPC 405 hard processor and MicroBlaze soft processor for the Xilinx Virtex-4 FX series of Platform FPGAs. The kit integrates the following contents:

• Virtex-4 ML403 development board (hardware);
  
• Fully licensed versions of the award-winning Platform Studio embedded tool suite and Integrated Software Environment™ (ISE) FPGA design software;
  
• Extensive peripheral support with more than 60 IP cores;
  
• JTAG probe (choice of USB or parallel) for code download, debug and FPGA programming;
  
• Serial and Ethernet cables, regional power supply, pre-configured FLASH device; and
  
• Variety of pre-verified reference designs and full documentation.

Central to the ML403 functionality is the Virtex-4 FX12 FPGA device with the immersed PowerPC 405 processor and integrated 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet controllers. Providing a rich set of features, the ML403 evaluation board includes required peripherals, memory, audio, video and user interfaces enabling designers to easily and cost effectively prototype/evaluate their embedded system design.

Pre-Verified Reference Designs and Intelligent Tools Accelerate Development
The programmable platform and intelligent Platform Studio design tools provided with the PowerPC and MicroBlaze Development Kit enable developers to craft embedded systems with the optimal combination of features, performance, area and cost. They can choose the most effective processor core for the target application, customize IP, optimize the performance, and validate software on a development board before their own custom hardware is even back from the shop.

In addition, the pre-verified reference designs delivered with the FX12 Edition kit offer a broad set of options for rapidly configuring complete systems, so developers can focus on adding value to their designs. These include both hardware and software implementations to exercise the many features of the ML403 platform, such as Ethernet, DDR memory, video and audio functions, as well as Wind River Systems VxWorks™ and Monta Vista embedded Linux operating system demonstrations.

Platform, Pricing and Availability
The PowerPC and MicroBlaze Development Kit, Virtex-4 FX12 Edition (DO-ML403-EDK-ISE), is immediately available for purchase at $895 US. The ISE FPGA and Platform Studio embedded tools shipped with the FX12 Edition kit support the following computing platforms: Windows® 2000 SP2, SP3, SP4, and XP SP1, SP2, Solaris® 2.8/5.8 and 2.9/5.9, as well as Linux® Red Hat® Enterprise 3.0. For complete information on Xilinx embedded development kits, visit www.xilinx.com/embdevkits.

About Xilinx
Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.

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