Press

Leading PLD supplier widens distribution agreement with SILICA to include Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine territories for its programmable solutions.

Munich – 11th February, 2008 -- Semiconductor distributor SILICA, an Avnet company, (AVT: NYSE) and Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic, today announced they have extended their long-term European franchise agreement. With immediate effect, the established strategic partnership will now include Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine.

The franchise agreement encompasses Xilinx’ full range of PLD solutions, lead by their FPGA Series Virtex™ (highest performance solutions) and Spartan™ solutions (lowest systems cost solutions), as well as the CoolRunner™ CPLD portfolio (lowest power solutions). Silica will also provide a line of development boards to help customers develop and test design concepts using Xilinx devices. Technical trainings, such as the FPGA Design Speedway Seminars, will be launched shortly for Moscow and St. Petersburg to help engineers decrease their time-to-knowledge for the rapid assimilation of Xilinx’ new technologies.

“The extension of the distribution agreement is indicative of the success of the existing collaboration between our companies,” says Vladimir Alexandrov, Country Manager Russia at Silica.  “We will provide first class design-in support for Xilinx products, helping to develop the business and ensuring that customers can fully exploit the advantages of Xilinx world-class technology.”

Alan Woodley, Area Sales Director, Channel Sales for Xilinx EMEA, commented: “Over the past years, Silica has been a key contributor to the strong growth of our products in the rest of Europe. The franchise expansion was therefore a consequential step to ensure that our growing customer base in Eastern Europe has rapid access to the components and the technical support that they need to develop and manufacture their products. Through this agreement customers will benefit from Silica’s highly trained technical personnel, and have access to their value-added services."

About Silica:

SILICA, a division of Avnet Electronics Marketing EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, Africa), is a highly specialised semiconductor distributor. SILICA operates 37 branch offices throughout Europe and provides customers with a broad portfolio of semiconductor products from 23 leading vendors along with in-depth technical support and the full set of logistics and value added services. The company's Web site is located at www.silica.com.

About XILINX

XILINX is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com.


SILICA PR Contact
Kerstin Kurth
Director Communications
Im Technologiepark 2-8
D-85586 Poing
Phone +49 (0)8121 77 7 340
Fax +49 (0)8121 777 4340
Email: kerstin.kurthsilica.com

XILINX PR Contact
Christelle Moraga
Public Relations - Europe
Phone: +44 (0) 1932 836 526
Email: christelle.moragaxilinx.com