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EAST FISHKILL, NY -- IBM and Xilinx today announced a two-year, multi-million dollar agreement under which IBM will manufacture the newly-announced Xilinx® Virtex-II Pro(TM) semiconductor products. IBM plans to manufacture the parts for Xilinx using IBM's most advanced 0.13 and 0.10 micron (a micron is a millionth of a meter) copper-based chip-making technology. This is the first time IBM will manufacture high-volume parts for a foundry customer using its most advanced processes, normally used in high-end microprocessors, custom chips and memory products. The Xilinx products will be manufactured at IBM facilities in Burlington, Vermont and East Fishkill, New York. The Xilinx Virtex-II Pro products are the first of its kind in off-the-shelf programmable system available to the engineering community that will enable new innovations to be taken to market rapidly and at a lower total cost to corporations. ``As one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, the decision to team with IBM for the manufacture of our products was a natural, from both a technical and a business standpoint,'' said Wim Roelandts, president and CEO at Xilinx. ``The Virtex-II Pro devices bring together IBM's leading PowerPC embedded processor technology with Xilinx's expertise in programmable (FPGA) technology. Our collaboration enables us to serve a five billion dollar opportunity and assures our customers a world-class source of supply.'' The Virtex-II Pro products are the result of a collaborative design effort between the two companies, integrating IBM's PowerPC microprocessor with Xilinx field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to form a new type of hybrid chip for use in communications, storage, and consumer applications. ``We're expanding our work with customers like Xilinx, who recognize that leading-edge technology, and the design expertise to exploit it, are critical to building today's semiconductors products,'' said Michel Mayer, general manager, IBM Microelectronics. ``By fully integrating our PowerPC with Xilinx's FPGA chips, we've developed a new design and development model. Now, by optimizing those designs with our advanced manufacturing processes, we've developed a new performance and supply model.'' IBM and Xilinx had originally announced in July, 2000 their plans to develop a hybrid approach to developing custom chips, combining Xilinx FPGA and IBM PowerPC microprocessor technology. With Xilinx's announcement of the resulting Virtex-II Pro products, backed by this manufacturing agreement with IBM, customers can now take advantage of this unique platform. For more information visit www.ibm.com or www.xilinx.com