Wim Roelandts: Programmable devices leverage voice, video, data application opps

By Ann Steffora Mutschler -- Electronic News, 1/31/2007

SANTA CLARA, CALIF.  -- After 40 years in the high-tech industry, Willem P. "Wim" Roelandts, president, chairman, CEO of Xilinx Inc. says he is still interested in electronics – a passion that began when he was 13 years old.

He explained he is very interested in the cycles that the industry moves in – and plans to leverage one that has taken longer than expected to truly take flight, namely the Internet cycle.

While the industry went through an “irrational exuberance” with the Internet in 2000, only to hit the bottom and hard, the promises are still there for the combination of voice, video and data applications, he said.

“We are moving into the next era and will realize the promise of 2000. Today we see it happening thanks to technology advancements and infrastructure being put into homes,” he explained. “For example, the number of ‘big pipes’ [for data communications] to homes in Japan is now more than for DSL.”

As such, the demand for triple-play applications is driving the need for high-performance programmable solutions with logic, connectivity, processing and DSP capabilities.

“Different domains evolve at different speeds; programmable logic is ideal for these applications,” he reminded.

Programmable logic devices also fill the gap when it comes to digital convergence. While multi-core microprocessors do indeed provide increasing levels of performance, quad-core processors is still not providing 4 times the processing power, and again, programmable devices can fill in where multi-core processors leave off, Roelandts explained further.

The argument is similar for consumer electronic applications because we are living in a world of continual change with evolving standards. “Companies have to be able to keep changing their existing designs to avoid starting from scratch,” he said.

To this end, he said Xilinx has continued to work to make programmable logic less and less expensive, with lower power requirement, but ever-increasing quality.

Admittedly, FPGAs are not found in high-volume, low-cost consumer devices, but in every Mercedes S-Class sedan, Roelandts pointed out that there are 17 Xilinx chips.

In the future, he said Xilinx will continue to make programmable logic devices better suited for consumer, automotive and portable applications.