Avnet Electronics Marketing (NYSE: AVT) and Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:
XLNX) have concluded their 90-city global X-Fest technical seminars.
More than 7,000 attended the technical sessions held across the globe.
Attendance exceeded expectations in all regions. In Europe, Avnet
Electronics Marketing's business unit SILICA hosted the entire X-Fest
series in 25 locations with more than 2,000 attending customers.
Working with key technology suppliers such as Xilinx, Texas
Instruments, and Analog Devices, X-Fest seminars offered design
engineers practical, how-to training around system-level design for
FPGA, DSP and embedded systems designers and ran worldwide in
locations throughout Europe, Asia, Japan and North America. The global
tour began in April and ended last month.
Attendees said the solutions approach was the biggest draw of the
event, praising the quality of the technical content of the workshops.
"I liked the fact that the X-Fest seminars showed the actual
capabilities of the products, which is what I came to see," said Rolf
Thompson, a U.S.-based design engineer for L-3 Communications. "I was
also impressed to see such a large cross-section of the supplier
community involved in the event - having all the suppliers that
support the Xilinx chips in one place was really helpful. X-Fest was a
great opportunity to talk with other engineers and learn from their
experiences with these technologies."
"X-Fest is a well organized event, which has offered a series of
practical training programs, especially in the domain of Embedded
Systems and Digital Signal Processing. Through the one-day program,
the multiple learning tracks have provided the delegates with a
diverse selection of the topics to attend," said Chen Xiaofan, Senior
HW/FW Engineer, Engineering Distributed I/O, Rockwell Automation Asia
Pacific Business Center Pte Ltd.
Strong attendance numbers and overwhelmingly positive
post-conference comments indicate the need for this type of
collaborative effort to support the needs of the market. Tim Barber,
vice president of global Xilinx marketing for Avnet Electronics
Marketing said, "Our vision for X-Fest was to deliver detailed,
real-world system design concepts that would apply directly to the
challenges and experiences of working engineers. The positive feedback
we have received from customers around the globe confirms that they
derive huge value from the very unique multi-vendor, technical format
that X-Fest delivered."
"X-Fest truly set a precedent in our industry," said Chris Henry,
vice president of channel sales at Xilinx. "It was an ideal platform
to expose designers to a broad range of real-world topics wired
specifically to help them advance their Xilinx design efforts. Never
before have so many FPGA-centric solution providers come together on a
worldwide scale to help customers experience first-hand how Xilinx
FPGAs can be at the heart of successful end products."
Plans are already underway for the next X-Fest technical seminar
series, which is tentatively scheduled to begin in the fall of 2008.
About Avnet Electronics Marketing
Avnet Electronics Marketing is an operating group of Phoenix-based
Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT), a Fortune 500 company. Avnet Electronics
Marketing serves electronic original equipment manufacturers (EOEMs)
and electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers in 70 countries,
distributing electronic components from leading manufacturers and
providing associated design-chain and supply-chain services. The
group's Web site is located at http://www.em.avnet.com.
About SILICA
SILICA, a division of Avnet Electronics Marketing EMEA (Europe,
Middle-East, Africa), is a highly specialised semiconductor
distributor. SILICA operates 37 branch offices throughout Europe and
provides customers with a broad portfolio of semiconductor products
from 23 leading vendors along with in-depth technical support and the
full set of logistics and value added services. The company's Web site
is located at www.silica.com.
About Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. is the worldwide leader of programmable logic
solutions. For more information, visit http://www.xilinx.com.
High-resolution photo is available for download at
http://www.silica.com/en/press/pressreleases.html
