Introduced by Xilinx with its Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families, Targeted Design Platforms provide embedded, connectivity, DSP, and hardware designers alike with access to a wide array of silicon devices supported by open standards, common design flows, IP, development tools, and run-time platforms. The new Virtex-6 FPGA and Spartan-6 FPGA Evaluation Kits announced in June 2009 were the first in a series of kits Xilinx plans to offer as part of the Targeted Design Platform strategy that enable designers to get started right out of the box with their evaluation and development of systems. These kits provide all the elements needed to design right out of the box, so both new and experienced FPGA users can achieve the best performance, lowest power, highest bandwidth, and most feature-rich utilization.
In addition, the built-in scalability and plug-in expandability of the base Targeted Design Platform kits lay the foundation for rapid deployment by Xilinx of domain-specific platform kits targeting connectivity, embedded, and digital signal processing (DSP) applications.
On November 11, 2009, Xilinx announced that its Targeted Design Platform strategy won Electronic Engineering & Product World's (EEPW) Best New Concept Award as part of their annual China Influential Embedded System New Technology Award program. This is one in a string of recognitions made by China's electronic engineering trade media since Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms were introduced at the beginning of the year.