Xilinx

Established in 1984 in Silicon Valley, Xilinx holds the distinction of being the pioneer behind FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) and Adaptive SoCs (System on Chips). The company’s revolutionary programmable silicon, complemented by a comprehensive suite of advanced software and tools, has played a pivotal role in driving rapid innovation across diverse industries and technologies. With their highly flexible and programmable processing platforms, Xilinx has provided the industry with dynamic processing technology, facilitating swift advancements and empowering intelligent computing. As a technology company, Xilinx continues to develop cutting-edge solutions that are flexible and adaptive to meet evolving industry needs.

Xilinx is the biggest maker of a class of chips that can be reconfigured for a variety of specialized tasks after they leave the factory. Such field programmable gate arrays, as they are called, have long been particularly popular in telecommunications applications, such as cellular base stations now being upgraded for the latest 5G technology.

The Xilinx platform is comprised of well-respected programmable logic boards governed by a system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Zynq. A programmable logic board can be an “accelerator” if you have a system that’s geared to run applications that use the exact same software routines repeatedly, such as AI, video transcoding, or encryption. Rather than rely on a CPU to run these routines in DRAM, an FPGA card may already have those routines stored and running in highly available local memory.

In October 2020, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) completed a significant stock acquisition of Xilinx, marking a transformative deal in the computer chip industry. The transaction, valued at 35 billion dollars, aimed to reshape and enhance the capabilities of both companies, leveraging their expertise and technologies to drive innovation in the industry.