(pressebox) (Poing, 30.07.2012) SILICA, an Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT) company, announces that the distinguished global X-Fest road show, organised together with Xilinx, was a huge success with well over 1,200 participants within seven cities in Europe alone. Coordinating the seminar series in the European region, Silica and Xilinx developed the events to comprise a day of intensive seminars covering a range of different technologies and methodologies based on Xilinx's new Artix(TM) -7, Kintex -7(TM) and Virtex(TM) 7 FPGAs and on the new Zynq(TM) -7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP) family. The events also featured multiple demos of solutions based on Xilinx technology from Analog Devices, Maxim, Micron, TE Connectivity, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx itself.

In addition to the specialized training, X-Fest featured a display of partner exhibits, presenting attendees the opportunity to interact directly with factory experts who shared their insights into exciting new products and advanced technologies, in accordance with demonstrations of the latest development platforms.

"X-fest is now THE place for designers, system architects and software engineers to meet industry experts involved with power, analogue, display, memory, FPGA and platform processing designs and technology," said Jim Beneke, vice president of global technical marketing at Avnet Electronics Marketing. "The event allows us to reach out to our customers with the best solutions to meet their needs, while helping them reduce time to market and extend product lifecycles."

At the X-Fest events, Silica showcased the ZedBoard (www.zedboard.org), a community oriented development kit for the Xilinx Zynq(TM) -7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP). ZedBoard is ideal for designers and students who are interested in exploring and prototyping their application ideas for the new Zynq-7000 EPP architecture. "The enormous interest in Europe in the new Xilinx ZYNQ-7000 EPP product and the Avnet ZedBoard surprised even us," noted Beneke. "Every customer I spoke with wanted a board in their labs as soon as they become available in a few weeks and plans to register in the community too. It looks like Xilinx has hit the sweet spot with the new ZYNQ-7000 EPP for the European market."

"This year's X-fest in Europe was a tremendous success and we had excellent feedback from customers and partners alike," added Andy Thorne, Silica's general manager and director of new technology. "The event provides yet more proof that Silica has a unique combination of technical competence and technology from industry-leading partners, providing tangible benefits to engineers wanting to design products using the latest technology."

Über Avnet Silica (An Avnet Company): Silica, an Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) company, is one of the leading semiconductor distributors in Europe. Silica accelerates its customers' success by connecting 25 technology suppliers with a broad base of more than 15,000 customers and providing in-depth design support and cost-effective, value-added services and solutions. For more information, visit www.silica.com