Xilinx

Xilinx's success can be attributed to one fundamental reason: we help our customers get to volume production faster. In today's competitive technology marketplace, it is not enough to bring products to market rapidly. Time-to-volume production has become the new imperative for technology leaders. Xilinx, Inc. designs, develops, and sells advanced programmable logic devices and related software development systems. It is the leading global supplier of programmable logic. In essence, the company's customized chips sequentially order the logic that tells sophisticated electronic gear the order in which its functions are to be performed. Xilinx bolted to the forefront of its industry during the late 1980s and early 1990s through breakthrough product innovations. Xilinx was founded in 1984 by Ross Freeman and Bernard Vonderschmitt. Freeman and Vonderschmitt were both working as chip engineers at Zilog Corp. prior to joining in the Xilinx venture. Zilog, a subsidiary of oil behemoth Exxon Corp., was a developer of integrated circuits and related solid-state devices and had numerous technological innovations to its credit. It was at Zilog that Freeman came up with the idea that would soon make Xilinx larger than Zilog. He wanted to design a computer chip that effectively acted as a blank tape, allowing the user to program the chip himself rather than having to purchase a preprogrammed chip from the manufacturer. Freeman was on the cutting edge of changes that were beginning to occur in the semiconductor industry. Prior to the mid-1980s, most computer chip manufacturers were interested almost solely in mass-market chips that could be produced in large volumes and sold for big profits. For several years that strategy was profitable for U.S. chipmakers, who dominated the global semiconductor market. But when low-cost foreign manufacturers, particularly in Japan, began competing for market share, traditional manufacturers, including Zilog, suffered in what eventually became a commodity industry. At the same time, chip consumers began demanding increasingly specialized chips that could be used for specific applications. Few big chip producers were excited about the prospects of chasing the market for application-specific circuits. Serving those customers meant designing and manufacturing many different chips, each of which would be sold to much smaller markets and at a lower total profit in comparison with mass-market chips. Because of the reluctance of chip makers to cater to their needs, consumers of application-specific circuits also were frustrated. Besides having to pay a relatively high price for customized chips, they were usually forced to endure costly problems related to defects in their chips. Specifically, if the semiconductor had a flaw or if the customer's chip requirements suddenly changed, the customer would have to wait up to several weeks or even months for a new chip. Such a holdup could cost millions of dollars if an entire project was stalled while waiting for the new semiconductor. Confident of the practicality of his concept, Freeman left his post at Zilog and began developing the first FPGA chip. He joined forces with another Zilog expatriate, Bernard Vonderschmitt. The 60-year-old Vonderschmitt also had been working as a vice-president and general manager at Zilog. Prior to that he had served 20 years at RCA, where he had headed the solid-state division. Their combined brainpower and management experience allowed them to attract several million dollars of venture capital, which they used to design the first commercially viable field programmable gate array. In 1984 they incorporated the venture as Xilinx, and in November of 1985 they began selling their first product. Xilinx's FPGA was based on the company's patented Logic Cell Array technology. The company's system basically consisted of an off-the-shelf programmable chip and a software package that could be used to program and tailor the chip for specific