Xilinx reports record growth in portable consumer devices

Xilinx, Inc. has announced double digit growth in CPLD revenues, driven by strong growth in portable consumer applications such as PDAs, cell phones, and MP3 players. The Xilinx CoolRunner-II family of low-power CPLDs grew 30 percent quarter-to-quarter, thanks to their solid reputation in the industry as the leading low-cost, low-power CPLD. Now representing a record 10 percent of overall company revenue, Xilinx annual CPLD sales have grown more than 85 percent over the past five calendar years, compared with overall market growth of just 17 percent (CY06 versus CY02).

Xilinx also announced today the immediate availability of its low-cost CoolRunner-II CPLD starter kit – ideal for prototyping high volume, ultra low-power applications such as handheld devices, smartphones, motor control interface, and embedded CPLD applications. The kit enables users to quickly develop and test applications while reducing design time and risk by leveraging its modular board architecture approach with multiple boards designed to work together. The kit includes an evaluation board with eight expansion connectors; three modules including PS2, seven-segment display, and slide switch; ISE™ WebPack design software, and a vast array of reference designs to shrink development time. An optional peripheral module bundle consisting of A/D, D/A, motor control, stereo amplifier, serial port, and other modules expand the functionality.

“The CoolRunner-II starter kit together with the peripheral module expansion option makes it simple for us to prototype a wide variety of functions into our CPLD development. It really helps to have all the tools in an affordable starter kit,” said Steve Chang, product marketing director for Mio Technology Ltd., one of the leading players in handheld navigation devices.

“With over 40 thousand kits already distributed and strong momentum in the market place, our growth continues as more and more portable design engineers begin to realize the time-to-market, low power and cost benefits of our CPLDs,” said David Loftus, general manager of the CPLD Division at Xilinx. “Time-to-market and shorter product life cycles are driving consumer market designers away from fixed ASIC/ASSP architectures to the flexibility offered by programmable logic. As our costs continue to decline, we have become even more competitive in winning high-volume consumer application designs, especially in portable handsets. Last quarter, we shipped over one million devices in a single month to one of our top handset manufacturers and that trend is expected to continue.”

Xilinx