There's an announcement on the Xilinx web site that the XC3S50, XC3S200, XC3S400, and XC3S1000 are now shipping. Is that the "real" XC3S50, or the XC3S50J? For my application, I need the BlockRAMs and 3.3V tolerant I/O, so the XC3S50J won't do.
It seems to me to be very misleading that the announcement claims that they are shipping now, and gives prices, but only in the footnote is it revealed that those are the prices for the end of 2004. Are today's prices so high that marketing is afraid to publicize them? I notice that Altera states OEM prices for mid-2004, which is somewhat more useful but still not ideal. I hope this doesn't turn into another one-upmanship game: "We'll state prices for a year from now." "Oh yeah? We'll state prices for TWO years from now! Nyah, nyah!"
The XC3S50J FPGAs are available today. Samples of the XC3S50 (no 'J' suffix) with 3.3V-tolerant I/O, block RAM, multipliers, and Digital Clock Managers (DCMs) are available at the end of the year. Until then, you might consider prototyping with the XC3S200 that has block RAM and 3.3V I/O. The XC3S200 has the same package footprints as the XC3S50.
prices
Not to defend Marketing folks, but quoting forward pricing is valuable information when you are considering FPGAs in a high-volume product. Today's small volume prices are indeed higher just as you might expect with any semiconductor product early in its life cycle. Buying a few parts for prototyping today can be many times more expensive than buying a large volume when then product goes into production a year from now. We generally try to quote projected volume OEM pricing for a least a year in the future just so that designers know what is possible in higher production volumes. FPGAs have the steep pricing decreases associated with other high-volume standard products like memories and processors.
At product launch, we announced that the XC3S1000 at 250K unit levels would be less than $20 in 2004.
formatting link
The latest release, based on current manufacturing experience with the product, further clarifies that the XC3S1000 at 250K unit levels will be less than $12 in late 2004. Again, this was meant only to provide a volume-pricing data point for products that would go into production about one year from now.
formatting link
--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/II/IIE FPGAs
formatting link
--------------------------------- Spartan-3: Make it Your ASIC
I agree that their pricing is somewhat misleading. In addition, their 'advertised' pricing ("million gate FPGA for under $xx) is for unbelievably high quantities. At least some other companies provide reasonable budgetary pricing. Fairchild is closer to 1000 for their web page pricing, Analog Devices is 10,000, etc.
A quick email to a distributor, fortunately, provides realistic quantity pricing.
Using the XC3S200 or even the XC3S400 for my prototype would be reasonable, but Arrow, Avnet, and Insight have no stock of either part. Avnet and Insight do apparently have the XC3S50J, though.
Also, it depends on the part family as well. The press release "By the boatload" prices for the V2Pro are based on 10k unit boatloads rather than 250k unit boatloads.
Has anybody made a table of "corrected" prices to include a ROM or such to load the FPGA?
-- The suespammers.org mail server is located in California. So are all my other mailboxes. Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses. These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's. I hate spam.
I am planning to use the XC3S400 (unless I find some more surprises) and I am being told the part will be shipping in production by the end of the year. I specifically asked for samples (not ES parts) by the end of November and was told they expect that would work. Until I said end of November though, they were hemming and hawing. So I would not expect to get any before then.
Don't expect them to show up on the disti's web sites. You need to talk to them to get in line. Remember, your disti is your friend!
As to pricing, I belive you can take the marketing number for gazilions and multiply that by 2 for qty 250 and by 1.5 for qty > 1000. When I pushed them on price, they eventually came back with a decent number. This is all 1Q04 pricing of course. Don't take a high number for a final answer, let them know that the Cyclone parts fit your sockets too.
--
Rick "rickman" Collins
rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.
Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.