I've said it before - not about Xilinx but about distributors; however it applies equally well to the online store:
you'll know the store wants to help the small guy when you see a PayPal button...
- Brian
MRAM is not new either. Ramtron has been making similar parts for years.
I think the PCI Express switch is the most innovative part because it links hardware like a real network. Since PCI express is a serial bus it can be extended by several feet, it might replace USB and firewire in the very near future. A PCI Express switch which has configurable ports is a key element for such a replacement.
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Ramtron's devices are FRAM, which I believe use a different method. They have a volatile read, and smaller devices / slower speeds. Freescales devices are the first of a technology line.
I also saw recent news from Hitachi/renesas that their Phase Change memory was in a real device
So that moves Virtex-5 into last place ?
-jg
The way I see it, they don't even have warehouses anymore in most cases. They forward your order to the chip manufacturer and put a new sticker on the package before they forward it to you.
That's why you have lead times of 20 weeks and why it's so hard to get chips in decent quantities (i.e., not hundreds of thousands of parts), because that would require them to a) really stock some parts (because you can't bother the manufacturer with thousands of small orders for a handful of chips) and b) repackage them in the quantities ordered. And that's too much effort nowadays.
They used to do it, and still do it for $1000 FPGAs, but I guess with the myriad of different packages, speed grades, RoHS/non-RoHS and so on, there's no way to stock nearly enough different parts...
If you need things like cheap SDRAM-memory chips, you're screwed in most cases. Getting a few samples is OK, but after that it's buy 1000 or nothing.
-- My email address is only valid until the end of the month. Try figuring out what the address is going to be after that...
Umm, maybe. Check the return address on sample parts you get from TI and I think Analog Devices, at least. Hmm, 701 Brooks Ave. South, Thief River Falls, MN. Isn't that the address of Digi-Key? What a coincidence!
So, at least in some cases, the manufacturer doesn't keep their own stock, or just doesn't want to deal with the hundreds of little envelopes going out.
Jon
Well, I guess finally someone notice it..
Obviously, Avnet and NuHorizon has bad attitude towards SME and consultants (and to those who dont want to buy 1000 pieces for prototyping).
If I run Xilinx, I would choose another distributor that's willing to help prototyping industries or there are no more mass quantity order for Xilinx's. (no prototype, no mass product).
-kunil
kunil,
Just one small problem: what other distributor(s)? Seems that the distributor business has "consolidated" down to two major distis.
One carries Altera, and one carries Xilinx.
I know that in some parts of the world, there are still more than these two choices, but increasingly we will see consolidation even in those marketplaces.
A distributor is increasingly challenged to provide value, and not add cost. How is this possible? If customers are unwilling to pay any premium whatsoever, and demand the lowest possible prices, they leave no room for anyone to profit, and as a result there is no shelf stock at all (anywhere). And, no services.
"Just in time" becomes "just late." How does a distributor pay their
200 Field Applications Engineers? (rough estimate of how many FAEs support Xilinx, we also have a similar number of factory FAEs, and how do we pay for their work effort if not through the sales price?)Stockholders freak out if there is more than 120 days of inventory at the factory (and rightly so). If we overbuild, at the rate prices erode on a new process/product, we end up taking a loss if we don't ship everything as it is built.
Imagine that this week is costs 1/2 as much to sell V5 as it did when it was introduced. Well, then all the inventory is now worth 1/2 as much. The result is a loss must appear on the financials. But, if we ship all the parts before the prices erode, we do not have to write off anything.
Peter and I also understand that small companies sometimes become big companies. There are many examples of remarkably successful companies, and many of them (most of them) use FPGA technology.
How do we continue to support the "onsy-twosy" crowd while also supporting the Nokia, Cisco, Huawei, Alcatel (etc) crowd?
How do we keep customers happy?
How do we provide the necessary engineering support?
How do we make shareholders happy?
Stay tuned....
Austin
I am a consultant, and have had good luck with Avnet and with the local rep organization. There's never been too much of a problem getting prototypes and pilot-production Xilinx parts for any of my clients.
Have you tried getting in touch with the local rep organization? A good relationship with them could work wonders.
S,
This is not the "rocket science" part of the business. Even with all of the constraints, there should be a way to get our samples to our customers.
Breaking packages into smaller packages means that customers must bake their parts before they use them, as moisture may have seeped into the parts when the packages were being re-packaged.
Moisture is death to the part, as the device will "popcorn" when solder reflowed to the pcb without a pre-bake.
No one wants to open the package (which may contain hundreds of parts), take one out, put it into a new package, and place it on a shelf for a customer.
That said, it is done, and done right by people, so it isn't like this is not possible, it is done everyday.
I wish it was as easy as you suggest, but to insure that we don't deliver popping corn, we do need to pay attention to the proper handling of the parts in the distribution channel. This is not a job for amateurs.
Austin
Good for you.
I live in Indonesia, and struggling to death for getting XC3S100E from AvNet and NuHorizon Singapore (I mean buying it, not getting free samples of it).
I don't know what they're thinking about. But I think small customer who ordered 10-pieces of XC3S100E for electronic billboard is not worth enough to serve.
That's where Digikey saved my day =)
I just wish there are more distributors that specialized in small order quantity. FPGAs and CPLDs obviously not an easy part to search in SE Asia region.
-kunil
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