have a close connection with its subject . it may require cleanup to comply with wikipedia s content policies particularly neutral point of view . please discuss further on the talk page . october 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message this article contains content that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . october 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message xilinx inc. xilinx headquarters in the united states type public traded as nasdaq xlnx nasdaq 100 component s & p 500 component industry integrated circuits founded 1984 ; 32 years ago 1984 founder jim barnett ross freeman bernie vonderschmitt headquarters san jose california u.s. area served worldwide key people dennis segers chairman of the board moshe n. gavrielov president ceo director products fpgas cplds revenue us 2.382 billion 2014 1 us 2.168 billion 2013 1 operating income us 748.927 million 2014 1 us 580.732 million 2013 1 net income us 630.388 million 2014 1 us 487.536 million 2013 1 total assets us 5.037 billion 2014 1 us 4.729 billion 2013 1 total equity us 2.752 billion 2014 1 us 2.963 billion 2013 1 number of employees 3 500 2016 2 website xilinx.com xilinx inc. za l ks zy lingks is an american technology company primarily a supplier of programmable logic devices . it is known for inventing the field programmable gate array fpga and as the first semiconductor company with a fabless manufacturing model . 3 4 5 founded in silicon valley in 1984 the company is headquartered in san jose california with additional offices in longmont colorado ; dublin ireland ; singapore ; hyderabad india ; beijing china ; shanghai china ; brisbane australia and tokyo japan . 6 7 major fpga product families include virtex high performance kintex mid range and artix low cost and the retired spartan low cost series . major computer software includes xilinx ise and vivado design suite . 8 contents 1 history 1.1 early days 1.2 growth 1.3 today 1.4 technology 2 current family lines 2.1 virtex family 2.2 kintex 2.3 artix 2.4 zynq 2.5 spartan family 2.6 easypath 3 corporate strategy and culture 3.1 origin of the company name 3.2 ross freeman 3.3 competition 4 references 5 external links history edit early days edit 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 . 6 9 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 . 9 the concept required lots of transistors and at that time transistors were considered extremely 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 xilinx s eighth employee . 9 big semiconductor manufacturers were enjoying strong profits by producing massive volumes of generic circuits . 6 designing and manufacturing dozens of different circuits for specific markets offered lower profit margins and required greater manufacturing complexity . 6 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 . 6 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 . 6 they incorporated the company in 1984 and began selling its first product by 1985 . 6 by late 1987 the company had raised more than 18 million in venture capital worth approximately 37 million in 2016 dollars adjusted for inflation and generated revenues at an annualized rate of nearly 14 million . 6 10 growth edit as demand for programmable logic continued to grow so did xilinx s revenues and profits . 6 from 1988 to 1990 the company s revenue grew each year from 30 million to 50 million to 100 million . 6 during this time period the company which had been providing funding to xilinx monolithic memories inc. mmi was purchased by xilinx competitor amd . 6 as a result xilinx dissolved the deal with mmi and went public on the nasdaq in 1989 . 6 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 . 6 xilinx competitors emerged in the fpga market in the mid 1990s . 6 despite the competition xilinx s sales grew to 135 million in 1991 178 million in 1992 and 250 million in 1993 . 6 the company reached 550 million in revenue in 1995 one decade after having sold its first product . 6 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 and europe . 11 12 13 14 xilinx s sales rose from 560 million in 1996 to 2.2 billion by the end of its fiscal year 2013 . 15 16 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 . 17 these targeted design platforms are an alternative to costly application specific integrated circuits asics and application specific standard products assps . 18 19 20 today edit 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 . 3 xilinx also has a global services and training program . 3 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 . 21 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 . 22 the company s products have been recognized by ee times edn and others for innovation and market impact . 23 24 25 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 . 26 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 . 27 28 in april 2012 the company introduced the vivado design suite a next generation soc strength design environment for advanced electronic system designs . 8 in may 2014 the company shipped the first of the next generation fpgas the 20 nm ultrascale . 29 technology edit the spartan 3 platform was the industry s first 90nm fpga delivering more functionality and bandwidth per dollar than was previously possible setting new standards in the programmable logic industry . xilinx designs develops and markets programmable logic products including integrated circuits ics software design tools predefined system functions delivered as intellectual property ip cores design services customer training field engineering and technical support . 3 xilinx sells both fpgas and cplds for electronic equipment manufacturers in end markets such as communications industrial consumer automotive and data processing . 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 xilinx s fpgas have been used for the alice a large ion collider experiment at the cern european laboratory on the french swiss border to map and disentangle the trajectories of thousands of subatomic particles . 37 xilinx has also engaged in a partnership with the united states air force research laboratory s space vehicles directorate to develop fpgas to withstand the damaging effects of radiation in space which are 1 000 times less sensitive to space radiation than the commercial equivalent for deployment in new satellites . 38 the virtex ii pro virtex 4 virtex 5 and virtex 6 fpga families which include up to two embedded ibm powerpc cores are targeted to the needs of system on chip soc designers . 39 40 41 xilinx fpgas can run a regular embedded os such as linux or vxworks and can implement processor peripherals in programmable logic . 3 xilinx s ip cores include ip for simple functions bcd encoders counters etc. for domain specific cores digital signal processing fft and fir cores to complex systems multi gigabit networking cores the microblaze soft microprocessor and the compact picoblaze microcontroller . 3 xilinx also creates custom cores for a fee . the main design toolkit xilinx provides engineers is the vivado design suite an integrated design environment ide with a system to ic level tools built on a shared scalable data model and a common debug environment . vivado includes electronic system level esl design tools for synthesizing and verifying c based algorithmic ip ; standards based packaging of both algorithmic and rtl ip for reuse ; standards based ip stitching and systems integration of all types of system building blocks ; and the verification of blocks and systems . 42 a free version webpack edition of vivado provides designers with a limited version of the design environment . 43 xilinx s embedded developer s kit edk supports the embedded powerpc 405 and 440 cores in virtex ii pro and some virtex 4 and 5 chips and the microblaze core . xilinx s system generator for dsp implements dsp designs on xilinx fpgas . a freeware version of its eda software called ise webpack is used with some of its non high performance chips . xilinx is the only as of 2007 fpga vendor to distribute a native linux freeware synthesis toolchain . 44 xilinx announced the architecture for a new arm cortex a9 based platform for embedded systems designers that combines the software programmability of an embedded processor with the hardware flexibility of an fpga . 45 46 47 48 the new architecture abstracts much of the hardware burden away from the embedded software developers point of view giving them an unprecedented level of control in the development process . 45 46 47 48 with this platform software developers can leverage their existing system code based on arm technology and utilize vast off the shelf open source and commercially available software component libraries . 45 46 47 48 because the system boots an os at reset software development can get under way quickly within familiar development and debug environments using tools such as arm s realview development suite and related third party tools eclipse based ides gnu the xilinx software development kit and others . 45 46 47 48 in early 2011 xilinx began shipping a new device family based on this architecture . the zynq 7000 soc platform immerses arm multi cores programmable logic fabric dsp data paths memories and i o functions in a dense and configurable mesh of interconnect . 49 50 the platform targets embedded designers working on market applications that require multi functionality and real time responsiveness such as automotive driver assistance