Avnet and Xilinx Expand Global Channel Relationship

PHOENIX—April 20, 2017—Avnet (NYSE: AVT), a leading global technology distributor, and Xilinx, Inc., the leading provider of All Programmable products, today announced a renewed commitment to their successful Primary Global Channel relationship of 31 consecutive years and wider distribution of Xilinx’s All Programmable products. The expansion of the relationship includes additional investment in technical selling resources worldwide; an entry into Avnet’s design and supply chain ecosystem; plus access to Avnet’s EMEA-based specialist semiconductor distribution arm, EBV Elektronik – all of which strengthen the long-standing relationship.

The mutual renewal and deepened relationship with Avnet, which now spans 31 of the 33 years Xilinx has been in business, is underscored by these new benefits for customers:

Additional resource investment and customer solution provisioning
Significantly more technical resources across all of Avnet’s global regions
Two-channel distribution strategy to compete effectively against other programmable logic architectures in EMEA
Full access to Avnet’s design chain and supply chain ecosystem – Hackster.io, Premier Farnell, and MakerSource – to identify new customer types, understand their requirements, and provide Xilinx and Avnet high-value solutions across the entrepreneur to enterprise market continuum
Pair Xilinx products and solutions with Avnet’s other leading supplier partner product portfolios creating even higher value and more comprehensive solutions offerings for customers with earlier entry into the design process
New access to Avnet’s demand generation powerhouse EBV business

“This announcement demonstrates the strength of Avnet’s commitment to our partnership with Xilinx, and to our global customers, by providing the resources they need to accelerate time-to-market and move new designs seamlessly from prototype through to volume production,” said Avnet CEO William Amelio. “The unprecedented relationship between Avnet and Xilinx continues to set the industry standard for truly synergistic technical collaboration and first-class customer support. We help customers around the world guide today’s ideas into tomorrow’s technology.”

“We value the long-standing relationship with Avnet and the critical role they have played in deploying Xilinx technology across a wide range of markets. The expansion of our global partnership is a testament of our long-term commitment, enabling a deeper engagement between our companies and our customers,” said Krishna Rangasayee, executive vice president of global sales at Xilinx. “The addition of EBV is strategic to our business growth, and the significant investment in resources across the geographies will enable more customers to realize the full potential and unique capabilities of Xilinx products.”

Beginning July 1, 2017, the EBV Elektronik line card will be expanded to sell and support Xilinx solutions to diverse customers in fast-growing market segments including: artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, cloud computing, embedded vision, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and 5G. Avnet Silica, also based in EMEA, will continue to distribute Xilinx solutions, furthering the benefits for Avnet’s customers.

Xilinx is the world’s leading provider of programmable platforms, with nearly 51 percent market segment share* and $2.31 billion in revenues in calendar year 2016. EBV Elektronik, Europe’s leading semiconductor distribution specialist, operates across 64 offices in 29 countries throughout Europe as well as in Israel and South Africa. EBV maintains a staff of 263 technical sales specialists and 128 continuously trained application engineers.

“We are seeing a growing number of customers choosing to deploy hardware and software ‘all programmable’ technology to create highly differentiated and flexible systems, with significant advantages in performance, power, and connectivity. Applications span an increasingly wide range of intelligent edge-to-cloud applications,” said Slobodan Puljarevic, president, EBV Elektronik. “At the same time, continued supplier consolidation is leaving gaps in regional technology ecosystems, sometimes limiting customers’ component options. We now have the opportunity to ensure that our programmable logic and SoC customer base has access to Xilinx’s industry-leading All Programmable product portfolio.”

For more information on the full portfolio of Xilinx products and solutions available from Avnet, click here. Visit www.zedboard.orgfor documentation, reference designs and training material for Zynq MPSoC and SOC-based kits, including ZedBoard, MicroZed^™, PicoZed^™and UltraZed^™.