Xilinx, Inc. is the world’s largest supplier of programmable logic devices, the inventor of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and the first semiconductor company with a fabless manufacturing model. The programmable logic device market has been led by Xilinx since the late 1990s. Over the years, Xilinx has fueled an aggressive expansion to India, Asia and Europe – regions Xilinx representatives have described as high-growth areas for the business.

Xilinx was founded in 1984 by two semiconductor engineers, Ross Freeman and Bernard Vonderschmitt, who were both working for integrated circuit and solid-state device manufacturer Zilog Corp.

While working for Zilog, Freeman wanted to create chips that acted like a blank tape, allowing users to program the technology themselves. At the time, the concept was paradigm-changing. “The concept required lots of transistors and, at that time, transistors were considered extremely precious — people thought that Ross’s idea was pretty far out,” said Xilinx Fellow Bill Carter, who when hired in 1984 as the first IC designer was the company’s eighth employee.

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