Well,
Suffice it to say, I don't agree with Paul, but that should come as no surprise.
Spartan 3S100E was just announced, so to ask if a 3S1500E is sampling is a bit like asking if we are ready to go visit Mars.
Seriously, announcement of the first available part usually means that the rest of the family is three to six months from even being taped out (for us, or Paul).
Announcement of the first part into production also means that the time till all parts are in production is out from three to six months (again, for us, or Paul).
Sometimes we do better than that. Sometimes they do better than that. Sometimes we both do worse. And suffer for it.
Depends on a lot of factors: are they any errata to fix? how many layer changes need to be made? is the process yielding? have we passed the process qualification? have we passed the product qualification? do we have parts ready to ship? so on and so forth.
For example: the 2S60 was announced as having received wafers on June
2, 2004.
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Then, they just recently admitted they will ship the final production version of that 2S60 part with the Iccint surge current fixed by the end of this month (3/31/2005). I am likely to believe this, as we just tested the 2S90, and the Iccint surge is all gone.
We announced the 4VLX25 on 6/28/2004 (lagging Altera, but we actually shipped five parts on boards on this date and the customer was USING them!).
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Then, we just recently announced we are shipping production on this part
1/31/2005:
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So, 9 months for a 2S60 from announcement of first wafer to production (unconfirmed, as it isn't 3/31 yet), and 7 months for the Xilinx 4VLX25 (confirmed).
Not much of a difference there.
If you go back and track every product announced, to every ES, to every product released to production, you will find a remarkably similar time line. After all, both Xilinx and Altera use world class fabs (UMC and TSMC), and both use a leading edge process, and the differences will be mostly related to factors that are totally random in nature (if we are going to be honest about it).
Go talk to your Xilinx FAE, and get the timeline for what you need.
Oh, and take the performance boasts (for these low cost parts) from everyone with a grain of salt. Until you see what your needs are, you are unlikely to be able to evaluate if there is even a difference in performance, and if that performance difference even matters for your application.
Sure, Spartan 3 (and 3E) have the 18X18 multipliers. And Altera has elements they are proud of in Cyclone 2.
But just like Virtex 4 vs Stratix 2, you are going to have to wade through a lot of very technical information if you are trying to compare benchmarks. Best you test your application, regardless.
Austin