The curtain has been lowered and the last lab session has been conducted – Xilinx Developer Forum (XDF) season officially wrapped up in Beijing the week before last. Starting with the unveiling of the Vitis unified software platform in October, the three forums in San Jose, The Hague and Beijing ushered in a new era for Xilinx as well as our customers, partners and developers. The progress and momentum we have gained over the last three months will not only have a lasting impact on our company but the technology industry as a whole, as we bring the power of our adaptable technology to all developers, from software engineers to AI scientists.

At our three forums, our President and CEO Victor Peng, as well as other Xilinx leaders, delivered a keynote address in which they illustrated the phenomenal progress we have made on our corporate strategy. Each keynote also included guest appearances and announcements from key customers, partners, and industry luminaries from across our core markets.

In Beijing, the final XDF stop of the year, Victor took the stage to discuss the evolution of the company and our technology in the context of three major trends: the explosion of big data, the dawn of artificial intelligence and the post-Moore’s Law era. Of course, a major focus was highlighting how we’re helping to enable the rapid pace of innovation in China. Xilinx Vice Presidents Salil Raje and Liam Madden took the stage next to speak to attendees about the power of Vitis and our 5G developments and deployments.

The keynote speakers were joined on stage by some prominent customers. They included:

• Inspur Systems CEO Peter Peng, who shared his enthusiasm for Xilinx technology, stating, “With the transformation of new IT architectures such as hardware refactoring and software definition, programmable and customizable technology has become an indispensable part of the entire IT life cycle.” He continued, “FPGA- and ACAP-powered computing represents the future for his company” — which is the leading global data center and cloud computing solutions provider in China.

• Jeff Zhang, the head of heterogeneous computing for intelligent FPGAs at Alibaba Cloud, explained that the use, stability and security of Xilinx FPGAs enable Alibaba Cloud to offer powerful computing power to its customers. Zhang highlighted how Xilinx technology is not only powering Alibaba’s own data center, but also that of enterprise customers using Alibaba Cloud services. He stated, “The unprecedented traffic we hosted during Singles Day—also known as the 11/11, the world’s biggest online shopping day—in the past two years has proven the safety, reliability and security of our system platform.” Finally, he touched on the power of FPGAs compared to the narrow use cases of GPUs.                                                                             

• Jackie Cheng, CIO of Zhongtai Securities, spoke to the tremendous benefits of Xilinx technology for financial applications. Cheng said, “FPGAs have a long history in fintech, but it was not until the advent of Xilinx Vivado HLS and Alveo accelerator cards that the financial industry was able to fully take advantage of the high speed, stability, and low latency enabled by Xilinx. What we need is extreme speed and the ability to deliver the latest technology to customers as quickly and reliably as possible. Using Xilinx we have in-depth applications currently in operation doing eXtreme Transaction Processing, including decoding, risk control, and algorithmic trading.” He added, “It’s the perfect experience.”

• Hongguang Zhang, the technical manager of Baidu, showcased EdgeBoard, a turnkey solution based on Xilinx and optimized for edge acceleration. Zhang said, “Xilinx adaptive platforms are ideal for accelerating local and edge AI model computing, which makes AI services more efficient. Developers can adopt Baidu’s fully configured solution and start taking advantage of acceleration immediately. Or, they can configure and customize for their specific needs using Baidu’s Brain AI Hardware Platform initiative.”

From San Jose to The Hague and Beijing, we are honored to have hosted more than 3,500 developers and technologists who, along with our partners and customers, showcased the power of Xilinx technology and our new Vitis unified software developer environment. There are some exciting changes on the horizon for XDF 2020, but you’ll have to wait to learn what we have in store. We’ll have a lot more to unveil in the new decade!