San J0se, Calif., March 27, 2001 - Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), Avnet (NYSE: AVT), and Actuality Systems, Inc. today announced a successful collaboration resulting in the design of a 3-D display that could revolutionize the future of design engineering, pharmaceutical design, and medical imaging. As a result of combining Avnet's "total customer solutions" philosophy and Xilinx® affordable Spartan?-II FPGAs, Actuality Systems successfully produced one of the world's highest-resolution 3-D display systems.

Whereas traditional technology flattens 3-D information onto a 2-D screen, Actuality's volumetric display makes 3-D data appear to float inside of a special viewing dome. The display acts as a "crystal ball" for the computer -- it accepts 3-D data from standard sources and converts it into volume-filling imagery that can be seen from any angle. Many aspects of the system's graphics processing architecture rely on the Spartan-II components. For example, the display contains a powerful graphics processing system and six Gb memory bank that computes and stores the 3-D data.

One industry expected to benefit from Actuality's 3-D display is life sciences -- biochemists can use Actuality's display technology to rapidly design new pharmaceuticals, a process that today requires discerning the complex shapes of molecules from two-dimensional computer screens or the use of 3-D goggles. Actuality's volumetric 3-D display is expected to allow scientists to intuitively identify new drug targets and collaboratively design applicable drugs more rapidly. The Xilinx Spartan-II components play a crucial role in ensuring the imagery is detailed, interactive, and compatible with existing computational infrastructure.

"Since we are using virtually every feature that Spartan-II FPGAs offer, we have to appreciate the high value we are getting for our money," said Gregg Favalora, president and CTO of Actuality Systems, Inc. "Avnet's commitment to superior customer service is second-to-none. Xilinx and Avnet have proven to be a powerful combination for a start-up company with limited resources."

As a start-up company that needed to ramp up quickly, Actuality found themselves in need of technical support, intuitive software, and hard-to-get components. "Avnet's approach to customers, regardless of their size, is to provide a single point of contact -- an account manager with access to and knowledge of the services needed to serve the customer's urgent and evolving needs," said Rick Sisk, vice president and director of emerging channels for Avnet Electronics Marketing.

"Generally the market perceives Avnet as a mega-sized distributor serving similarly large OEMs and contract manufacturers. It may come as a surprise to learn that Avnet has a dedicated business group to focus on total customer solutions specifically for start-up customers. We are excited to be involved with Actuality and to help them realize their goal while at the same time building a strong relationship with a promising young company."

Actuality selected Spartan-II devices because they are the smallest FPGA available with a PCI core, asynchronous FIFO and DDR SDRAM reference designs, Select I/O, and large pinout options. Using an advanced process technology, Spartan series FPGAs substantially reduced die size over the previous generation of FPGAs while measurably improving gate density and performance.

About Actuality Systems, Inc.

Actuality Systems, Inc. is dedicated to producing products that give intuitive access to large quantities of information. Its initial product is one of the world's most capable 3-D display systems, a device that makes instantly understandable floating 3-D imagery using data from fields as diverse as pharmaceutical design, MCAD, medical imaging, and complex data analysis. Founded in 1997 and headquartered outside of Boston, Actuality's technologies are unique mixtures of cutting-edge optical design, high-performance electronics, and fundamentally new computational techniques. See www.actuality-systems.com for more information.

About Avnet Electronics Marketing

Avnet Electronics Marketing (EM) is the largest operating group of Phoenix, Ariz.-based Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), a Fortune 500 company with annual sales exceeding $11.5 billion. One of the world's largest distributors of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components from leading manufacturers, Avnet EM markets, inventories and adds value to these products and provides world-class supply-chain management and engineering design services. Avnet EM serves customers in 63 countries. The company's Web site is located at www.avnet.com .

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.