Xilinx and CAST Expand AllianceCORE Offerings With Seven New Cores; New Cores Make Cost Effective Solutions in New 3.3-volt SpartanXL and XC9500XL Devices.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1998--Xilinx Inc., (NASDAQ:XLNX) announced today seven new AllianceCORE products available immediately from Xilinx AllianceCORE partner CAST, Inc.

These products include serial communications and microprocessor peripheral cores. They are often used in PC and embedded applications such as medical instrumentation, industrial control, aerospace, defense, and communications systems.

"These new AllianceCORE products are significant because they are functional replacements for common functions, many of which are no longer available as discrete solutions," said Newton Abdalla, president of CAST, Inc. "They constitute the beginning of an embedded systems design kit, providing essential building blocks in a proven, easy-to-reuse form."

The cores that are now available from CAST for use in Xilinx programmable logic are: -- C16450 UART -- C16550 UART with FIFOs -- C_UART Compact UART -- C6850 Asynchronous Communications Interface Adapter (ACIA) -- C8255A Peripheral Interface -- C8259A Programmable Interrupt Controller -- C2901 Bit Slice unit

"With this addition, CAST becomes the largest contributor of cores to the AllianceCORE program," said Mark Bowlby, AllianceCORE program manager at Xilinx. "This makes them an attractive supplier to Xilinx customers who want to buy multiple cores from a single source."

These cores are also among the first to support the new Xilinx SpartanXL FPGA and XC9500XL CPLD 3.3-volt families. They can be cost effective when integrated with additional logic in one of the recently announced SpartanXL devices. For example, CAST's compact UART core only takes seven percent of the logic cells of an XCS30XL device, making the effective cost of that core in programmable silicon only $0.46. The added cost of the core license fee amortized in high volume applications is negligible, as shown in the table below for all of the new CAST cores.

Cast core         Percentage of XCS30XL            Effective cost of
              used  ($6.95 US direct pricing       in core in silicon
                 mid-99 for 100,000 units)

C_UART                           7%                   $0.46
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C2901                           13%                   $0.93
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C16450                          27%                   $1.89
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C16550                          86%                   $5.95
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C8255A                          13%                   $0.93
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C8259A                          30%                   $2.08
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C6850                           15%                   $1.04
----------------------------------------------------------------------

                       CAST license fee                Total cost per
Cast core            (Xilinx-only netlist -         device (effective
                      Charged by CAST)               silicon cost +
                                                amortized license fee)

C_UART                       $1500                    $0.48
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C2901                        $3000                    $0.94
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C16450                       $5000                    $1.94
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C16550                       $6250                    $6.01
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C8255A                       $4500                    $0.98
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C8259A                       $8500                    $2.17
----------------------------------------------------------------------
C6850                        $3000                    $1.07
----------------------------------------------------------------------

All cores support the Xilinx XC4000XL and Spartan FPGA families. The C_UART, C6850, C8255A, and C16450 cores also support the XC9500 and new XC9500XL CPLD families. License fees for the Xilinx netlist versions of each core range from $1,500 to $8,500. CAST can also provide source code versions at additional cost.

CAST develops and markets synthesizable cores and simulation models for HDL design. The company is a member of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) and of the Xilinx AllianceCORE programs. CAST is located at 24 White Birch Drive, Pomona, NY 10970. Phone: [phone], fax: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail], Web: www.cast-inc.com.

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and commands more than half of the world market for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to significantly reduce the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunication, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx website at www.xilinx.com.

Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC prefixes and AllianceCORE are trademarks of Xilinx. CAST is a trademark of CAST, Inc. Other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.