New Delhi: Xilinx (www.xilinx.com), the world’s leading programmable logic supplier, has announced the appointment of CG-CoreEl as its authorised training provider (ATP) in India. CG-CoreEl (www.cg-coreel.com) will provide a broad array of international standard Xilinx programmable logic training services through its Sandeepani training centre in Bangalore.

The announcement underscores Xilinx’s commitment to provide its customers with a comprehensive suite of education, support and design services worldwide. With 90 per cent share of the high-end Platform FPGA (field programmable gate array) market segment, Xilinx is providing its customers with the training and services necessary to design with FPGA technology while reducing time to market and overall systems costs.

“Customer demand for specialised services is growing at an increasing rate. At the same time, we are entering a new era of systems design with FPGAs often being used as system platforms,” says Don Mullikin, vice-president of the global services division at Xilinx. “These trends, combined with the continual introduction of FPGAs to new engineers, is driving a new set of requirements in our industry. We see our expanded services as setting the industry standard and completing the systems design solution.”

Courses will range from the basics of programmable logic design to topics such as advanced FPGA implementation, DSP implementation techniques and Embedded Systems design. As an ATP, CG-CoreEl students can be assured of the same standard of training as those received by Xilinx customers in North America and Europe. Xilinx will provide all the course materials to the Sandeepani training centre with CG-CoreEl being responsible for effective execution of these courses.

Xilinx has already conducted an intensive ‘train-the-trainer'' programme, with regular ongoing visits to keep trainers abreast of the latest design trends. Course fees are kept low to enable as broad a spectrum of firms to benefit from the training.

“India has experienced an unprecedented growth in the hi-tech sector, with many multinational companies establishing their major design centres in the country,” says David Keefe, manager of global services, Xilinx Asia Pacific. “In addition, India’s domestic consumption of programmable logic devices has also increased rapidly, mainly in the telecom sector.”

Keefe says with CG-CoreEl’s appointment, students are assured of getting the best possible training in this field. “Companies can send their freshly recruited engineers for basic training, and also have their experienced engineers attend advanced training sessions or get them exposed to programmable logic for exciting new applications like Multi Gigabit Serial I/O.

“All this helps the time-to-market for our customers and enables them to best utilise the exciting new features of Xilinx programmable logic devices.” Globally, Xilinx has been investing heavily in customer education and has developed professional course materials for a wide variety of programmable logic users.

The ATP agreement with CG-CoreEl follows the company’s recent appointment as Xilinx’s sales representative for India. The latter involves CG-CoreEl providing local sales and technical support to new and existing customers.

Both agreements build upon a long time working relationship between the two companies. CG-CoreEl has acted as a Xilinx product distributor, as well as a Xilinx AllianceCore and Xperts partner previously. CG-CoreEl has also been providing design services to many of Xilinx’s customers, both in India and overseas.

“The ATP agreement between Xilinx and CG-CoreEl marks another milestone in the close cooperation between our two companies,” says Ramesh Babu, executive director of CG-CoreEl Programmable Solutions. “With Xilinx’s backing we are committed to further expand our VLSI training at Sandeepani to spread the knowledge and use of programmable logic throughout India.”