China's media gets it

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised with the China Electronics News award to Xilinx for “Best FPGA Product 2009,” for the Targeted Design Platform. Not because CEN had such unique insights about the product features or Xilinx as a company, but because of what Editor in Chief Liu Dong had to say about the FPGA not being a chip, a suite of IP tools, or even a development system.

The whole purpose of this blog is to recognize the degree to which the FPGA has turned into a suite of design methodologies and programmable functions that are tailored to vertical markets. All the major device players in the field understand that, yet there is still a lot of focus on device architectures from a “speeds’n’feeds” machismo perspective. This week’s award from CEN for the Targeted Design Platform is important in its own right and a nice feather in Xilinx’s cap, but Liu Dong’s comment is far more important for what it says to the industry about what is important in assessing the FPGA business model.