Xilinx President and CEO Victor Peng said in a press briefing this week that his company’s acquisition by AMD continues to move forward, as the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority earlier in the week launched its formal investigation of the deal.
“We [AMD and Xilinx] are largely complementary in the markets we serve, with one important area of intersection, and that’s in the data center,” Peng told several media members gathered for the Zoom briefing. “Integration planning has been going well. Things are progressing as far as regulatory approval goes.”
Peng did not directly comment on the U.K. merger inquiry, which was opened this week with an invitation-for-comments deadline of May 21. After the briefing, Xilinx stated in an email to Fierce Electronics that the inquiry is "a standard part of the regulatory approval process in the U.K." The CMA plans to render a decision by July 6. AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx was announced last fall.
Chip shortage
Peng also commented on the semiconductor shortage and ongoing supply chain challenges that have caused product delays across many industries, calling the shortage “unprecedented.” He added, in response to a question during the briefing’s Q&A session, “I’m completing my 39th year in the industry, and don’t ever remember anything like this happening.”
Regarding the root causes of the shortage, Peng described it as a confluence of trends and events. “The world is getting smarter. Everything is getting smarter, but it’s not just that -- everything also is getting more connected” which drives demand across the board, he said, adding, “Then you had the whole Covid thing which threw everyone for a loop. Everything closed up so quickly and then opened back up so suddenly that it created issues. Also, everyone started trying to build up inventories and with all the demand foundries just can’t put enough capacity online quickly enough.”
As other industry executives have suggested, Peng said the chip challenges are likely to continue into 2022, but added, “We’re focused on meeting our customers’ needs, and working closely with our suppliers to meet our needs.”
Market focus
Peng became CEO of Xilinx in early 2018, but prior to that served as COO and had been a senior-level products executive at the company. Before becoming CEO, he implemented a three-point product strategy, as well as a plan to migrate Xilinx to become a provider of board-level solutions.
The three-point strategy, which Peng described this week as less of a priority-based list and “more like a three-legged stool,” consists of a data center-first focus for products, a plan to strengthen growth in core markets and a desire to drive the evolution of adaptive computing.
In the years since, Xilinx has come out with new products targeted to help it realize those aims, including Alveo acceleration cards to meet the increasingly dynamic demands for storage, networking and security in data center environments, and the Kria system-on-module board-level family.
“We are moving to platforms, and coming closer in some cases to giving our customers complete solutions so they don't have to do everything themselves,” he said. “We’re also growing our user base with increased focus on software, frameworks and ecosystems.”
The moves led directly to “double-digits” growth in data center revenue last year. “After three years of this growth strategy, we are building momentum in data center, growing fast in our core markets like 5G, and driving adaptive computing forward.”
In the data center market, Xilinx has seen hyperscale web firms as moving more aggressively to adopt new technologies, with enterprises still being more conservative, but Peng said he company is excited about future opportunities that will emerge after the market’s “unexpected headwinds” subside.
“People are no longer looking for 20% or 30% performance improvement. They want many tens or 100-times improvement,” he said. “The demand for compute seems infinite.”
RELATED: Xilinx launches "composable" SmartNIC for networking, security, storage