History

Early days

Ross Freeman, Bernard Vonderschmitt, and James V Barnett II, who all had worked for integrated circuit and solid-state device manufacturer Zilog Corp, founded Xilinx in 1984.

While working for Zilog, Freeman wanted to create chips that acted like a blank tape, allowing users to program the technology themselves. At the time, the concept was paradigm-changing. "The concept required lots of transistors and, at that time, transistors were considered extremely kick precious – people thought that Ross's idea was pretty far out", said Xilinx Fellow Bill Carter, who when hired in 1984 as the first IC designer was the Xilinx's eighth employee.

Big semiconductor manufacturers were enjoying strong profits by producing massive volumes of generic circuits. Designing and manufacturing dozens of different circuits for specific markets offered lower profit margins and required greater manufacturing complexity. What became known as the FPGA would allow circuits produced in quantity to be tailored by individual market segments.

Freeman failed to convince Zilog to invest in creating the FPGA to chase what was only a $100 million market at the time. Freeman and Barnett left Zilog and teamed up with their 60-year-old ex-colleague Bernard Vonderschmitt to raise $4.5 million in venture funding 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 (worth approximately $37 million in 2013 dollars adjusted for inflation) and generated revenues at an annualized rate of nearly $14 million.

Growth

As demand for programmable logic continued to grow, so did Xilinx's revenues and profits.

From 1988 to 1990, the company's revenue grew each year from $30 million to $50 million to $100 million. During this time period, the company which had been providing funding to Xilinx, Monolithic Memories Inc. (MMI), was purchased by Xilinx competitor AMD. As a result, Xilinx dissolved the deal with MMI and went public on the NASDAQ in 1989. The company also moved to a 144,000-square-foot (13,400 m²) plant in San Jose, California in order to keep pace with demand from companies like HP, Apple Inc., IBM and Sun Microsystems who were buying large quantities from Xilinx.

Xilinx competitors emerged in the FPGA market in the mid-1990s.^[4] Despite the competition, Xilinx’s sales grew to $135 million in 1991, $178 million in 1992 and $250 million in 1993.

The company reached $550 million in revenue in 1995, one decade after having sold its first product.

According to market research firm iSuppli, Xilinx has held the lead in programmable logic device market share since the late 1990s. Over the years, Xilinx expanded operations to India, Asia andEurope.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Xilinx's sales rose from $560 million in 1996 to $2.2 billion by the end of its fiscal year 2013.^[12][13] Moshe Gavrielov – an EDA and ASIC industry veteran who was appointed as president and CEO in early 2008 – introduced targeted design platforms to provide solutions that combine FPGAs with software, IP cores, boards and kits to address focused target applications. These targeted design platforms are an alternative to costly application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs).

Today

The company has expanded its product portfolio since its founding. Xilinx sells a broad range of FPGAs, complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), design tools, intellectual property and reference designs. Xilinx also has a global services and training program.

After using the introduction of 3D chips to deliver more powerful FPGAs, Xilinx then adapted the technology to combine formerly separate components in a single chip, first combining an FPGA with transceivers to boost bandwidth capacity while using less power.According to 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 with an FPGA, are part of shifting its position from a programmable logic device supplier to one delivering “all things programmable”.

The company's products have been recognized by EE Times, EDN and others for innovation and market impact.

In addition to Zynq-7000, Xilinx product lines (see Current Family Lines) include the Virtex, Kintex and Artix series, each including configurations and models optimized for different applications.With the introduction of the Xilinx 7 series in June, 2010, the company has moved to three major FPGA product families, the high-end Virtex, the mid-range Kintex family and the low-cost Artix family, retiring the Spartan brand, which ends with the Xilinx Series 6 FPGAs. In April 2012, the company introduced the Vivado Design Suite - a next-generation SoC-strength design environment for advanced electronic system designs.

For further informations refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xilinx