Xilinx, which employs about 350 people at its international engineering and R&D headquarters in Dublin, has invested €3 million in a European data centre hub.
The investment forms a key part of the firm's €52 million expansion programme here and was made despite a huge slump in custom semiconductor sales.
These type of chips are highly complex semiconductors that are capable of being programmed individually for use in a wide range of electronic systems, such as games' consoles and TV set-top boxes.
New figures from research firm Gartner show sales of Xilinx's custom semiconductors declined 26 per cent during the huge slump in technology spending in 2001.
Xilinx, which is ranked fifth in the custom chips' market, lost ground to market leader IBM, which increased sales 1.2 per cent. Sales at number two seller Agere Systems fell 44 per cent from 2000. Tied for third were LSI Logic, with a 38 per cent drop, and Japan's NEC, with a fall in sales of 35 per cent.
Xilinx's new internet data centre will service the information processing requirements of all European operations, which require the transfer of large volumes of business and engineering. The centre will manage up to eight terabytes of data when it opens today.
Mr Kevin Cooney, European information technology director at Xilinx, said the centre would also provide resilience and redundancy for all Xilinx's critical systems.
"The critical nature of the systems involved and the necessity for a continuous uptime were key issues for the design team," he said. "By building such a highly resilient infrastructure we will significantly reduce the impact of any unexpected events."
The data centre will also provide diversity across a range of services including data fibre, networks, electrical supply and power generation facilities
