Product Attributes

Founded in 1984 and inventing field-programmable logic gate arrays (FPGAs) in the same year, Xilinx is the world’s leading provider of complete solutions for programmable logic. As the inventor of the FPGA, programmable SoC, and ACAP, Xilinx is committed to providing the industry’s most flexible processor technology with highly flexible programmable chips supported by a range of advanced software and tools for use in networking communications, automotive electronics, consumer electronics and data centers. The company currently meets more than 50% of the world’s demand for FPGA products.

Xilinx’ revenue is derived from four main businesses: AIT (Aerospace & Defence, Industrial, Test & Measurement), Automotive, Broadcast & Consumer Electronics, Wired & Wireless, and Data Centres.

Communications is the most widely used scenario for FPGAs

Compared to other types of chips, the programmability (flexibility) of FPGAs is highly suited to the continuous iterative upgrading of communication protocols. Therefore, FPGA chips are widely used in wireless and wired communication devices.

With the advent of the 5G era, FPGAs are rising in volume and price. In terms of quantity, due to the higher frequency of 5G radio, to achieve the same coverage target as 4G, approximately 3-4 times the number of 4G base stations are required (in China, for example, by the end of 20, the total number of mobile communication base stations in China reached 9.31 million, with a net increase of 900,000 for the year, of which the total number of 4G base stations reached 5.75 million), and the future market construction scale is expected to be in the tens of millions. At the same time, due to the high concurrent processing demand of the whole column of large-scale antennas, the FPGA usage of 5G single base stations will be increased from 2-3 blocks to 4-5 blocks compared to 4G single base stations. As a result, FPGA usage, a core component of 5G infrastructure and terminal equipment, will also increase. In terms of unit price, FPGAs are mainly used in the baseband of transceivers. The 5G era will see an increase in the scale of FPGAs used due to the increase in the number of channels and the increase in computational complexity, and as the pricing of FPGAs is positively correlated with on-chip resources, the unit price is expected to increase further in the future. FY22Q2, Xilinx’ wireline, and wireless revenue increased by 45.6% year-on-year to US$290 million, accounting for 31% of total revenue.

FPGAs can be used as data center accelerators, AI accelerators, SmartNICs (intelligent network cards), and accelerators in network infrastructure. In recent years, the boom in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, high-performance computing (HPC), and autonomous driving has given FPGAs new market impetus and catalyzed incremental space.