Can the programmable logic industry break out of its $3.6bn niche? Xilinx reckons it can, and it aims to achieve that by making programmables accessible to more people.
"I believe in the past we've focussed on the underlying technology in the FPGA", Brent Przybus, director of product marketing at Xilinx, told Electronics Weekly, "we've said: 'How great it is to have a six input LUT'. Now, when we talk to customers we're not just talking to FPGA customers any more."
What Xilinx is doing is producing tools with which non-FPGA users can very quickly - in a week or so - learn how to programme an FPGA.
"Engineers who haven't used FPGAs before can use them using these evaluation kits, and they can learn to do it in a week," said Przybus, "everything is there to enable engineers to go to the next step".
The kits come in two flavours a Spartan kit and a Virtex kit costing $295 and $1995 respectively. They are rapidly expanding the Xilinx customer base.
See also: Mannerisms -
Bridge Of DiesSign up for the weekly Mannerisms blog newsletter, delivered on Tuesdays.
"In six months we've added 650 early access customers", said Przybus, "people who haven't used FPGAs before." Xilinx now has 1,000 early access customers compared to 350 at the end of last year.
That's not hugely additive to Xilinx's 37,000 customers, but it's a start. Coming along are more specific evaluation kits aimed first at engineers in particular technical areas, later on at engineers in particular markets.
The first more specialised kits, called 'domain-specific', will be for connectivity, embedded and DSP applications. They are due to be launched later this year.
Then, next year, come kits targeted at specific markets: communications (both wired and wireless); video processing; broadcast; aerospace and defence, automotive; surveillance; consumer.
"And that," concluded Przybus, "is how we get out of the $3.6bn number and to a bigger number."