Altera delivery

Since when do they use FPGAs in high volume stuff like cell phones or tablets?

I see FPGA supply vary all the time as well as other devices. Once I couldn't get an AKM CODEC in the 8 week window I tend to rely on and the disti got AKM in the loop. They said they had a reliable 14 week factory delivery as if that was something to brag about! I'm a small player so all I can do is grin and say "thank you".

Rick

I've been told that everyone is cutting back production starts, expecting 2010 redux if Obama is reelected.

they don't, but as far I know Altera use TSMC, Xilinx UMC so they compete for time at the fabs with the cell phone stuff

-Lasse

That may be, but the fabs schedule production runs way, way in advance. I'm sure Xilinx and Altera are at the head of the list when it comes to getting more share as well. If there was a shortage, it would more likely be higher FPGA demand than it would be X or A getting cut out of their fab time.

Rick

Quallcomm is way more important than ether X or A. Even NVidea and AMD are, at very least, as important as X&A. Also, does not TI use TSMC for OMAP5? If true, it wouldn't affect Arria2, since it uses older fabs, but could affect priority of 5- series Altera products.

It's the same thing seen from different angle. You have higher demand than was originally expected and then want to get more waffers than what's already scheduled, but can't because you are not the most important of TSMC customers.

They use silicon and wafer steppers. Both Xilinx and Altera are fabless, so they have to compete for fab slots.

You would think, for $200 to $15,000 per FPGA, that they could get their wafers fabbed.

Except that selling price of Arria II GX65 to big customers is much less than $200. And by die area it's no small chip.

Few years ago I heard about one not particularly big, but important Altera customers getting Startix3-50E for $100 apiece. Stratix, not Arria. Arria2 is considered mid-range rather than high-end, so I wouldn't be surprised if really big customers are paying $60-$70 for A2-GX65.

I don't think any customers are the 600 lb gorilla. A small customer might get displaced, but none of the large customers expect to have their schedules disrupted and none expect to be able to disrupt the schedules of the other gorillas.

Rick

Geeze, can't you leave politics out of a technical thread? Oh, I forgot, this is sci.electronics.design! Politics is always on topic...

Rick

comes

But Qualcomm and Apple *are* 600 lb gorillas of fabless semico. That's a fact of life. Apple is currently on Samsung, but relationships between the two are bad. So the switch is likely. And if Apple switches to TSMC then any other TSMC client with exception of Qualcomm, and, possibly, Bradcom and TI will look as a Lilliput. And even in Lilliput category, Altera and Xilinx are smaller than Nvidea and AMD.

xpect to have

Schedules of big Lilliput wouldn't be disrupted, but he can't expect to get the same flexibility of allocation of the wafers as 600 lb gorillas

(snip)

Since ASIC mask costs went over $1e6 or so, and FPGA prices fell enough to make it cost effective.

Besides, with an ASIC you are stuck with that design for a long time, but with FPGA you can change to follow what is popular.

-- glen

Isn't a megabuck still in the noise for cell phones and tablets? Gartner and IDC say there were 1.5 *Billion* cell phones sold in the world in 2011! I'll bet damn few of them contained any FPGAs. That is what Silicon Blue (now part of Lattice) was trying to change, but I don't know how successful they are in that particular market selling $1-2 parts.

Have you seen any teardowns of tablets or cell phones with FPGAs in them? I haven't.

Rick

I see those $7K to 15K FPGAs in the distributor listings, and wonder WHO the hell can afford a $7K or more chip? I'm guessing some simulation farms and NSA code crackers have good reason for such chips, but that must be a fairly small niche market, no? Obviously, no such chip ever winds up in consumer gear.

Jon

(snip)

Maybe true, but FPGAs are going in many places that would have been custom ASICs not so long ago.

I haven't followed the teardowns closely at all.

-- glen

It used to be that a fair number were used in LCD TVs: meant you could get your panels from wherever panels were cheapest that day and program the FPGA to drive that particular panel type. I suspect that there's been enough of a shakeout in the LCD TV factory world that there are now very few panel types and not much of a spot market for them.

Tom

Idiot, it *is* the reason given. You really are a loser, like you boy Obama.

Oh yeah, like everyone hates Obama and thinks the world will end if he is elected.

Reminds me of the movie "Chinatown", at the end someone says something like, "Forget about it Jack, its Chinatown". I should forget about it, this is just s.e.d.

Rick

You really are an idiot's idiot.

Good God, you're as stupid as Slowman.