The big news at Xilinx' annual analyst day on February 22: A new partner for foundry services at the 28nm node.

In addition to Intel acquiring an FPGA vendor, other acquisitions could be possible including Analog Devices buying a power management IC company and Microchip Technology buying a company to expand its presence in the microcontroller market.

Xilinx has completed multiple iterations of 28nm test wafers with TSMC, and could disclose the move to TSMC at its analyst day in March.

Intel may look to acquire an FPGA supplier such as Xilinx or Altera in 2010 in an effort to expand its presence in the embedded market as well as SoCs, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Xilinx and Altera, which together control more than 85% of the programmable logic market, are poised to grow twice as fast as the broader semiconductor industry going forward, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Spansion has announced its MirrorBit flash memory is now available as a verified configuration solution for the new Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA family.

"I am encouraged by the broad-based recovery in our business," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO. "September quarter operating margin was 20%, up from 15% in the prior quarter."

Virtex-5 sales are expected to increase significantly in the September quarter, surpassing 20% of total sales, according to Xilinx. The company is scheduled to report its second quarter financial results on October 14, 2009.

Xilinx has announced net income was US$38.0 million for the quarter ended June 27, 2009, down 56% from US$86.3 million a year ago. The specialized chipmaker also saw its net sales for the quarter slide 23% on year.

Logic-chip maker Xilinx said sales in its fourth quarter would decline less than forecast, helped by better-than-expected wireless-communications sales. The forecast comes a day after rival Altera presented a more optimistic -- though still muted -- view of first-quarter revenue than it had in January because of better-than-expected demand from manufacturers providing equipment for Chinese 3G wireless networks.

Programable chip maker Xilinx lowered its fiscal third-quarter guidance Tuesday, saying sales in December have been weaker than anticipated. Xilinx shares dipped 13 cents to $18 after hours Tuesday, after closing up 5 percent for the day.