Why is Spartan-3 more expensive than Cyclone?

Hi everyone,

I compared the prices of two FPGAs from Digikey

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+) Xilinx Spartan-3, XC3S1000 - 4FTG256C with LC:1920, I/O pins:173. Price: 47.87$

+) Altera Cyclone, EP1C6Q240C8N - ND with LC:5980, I/O pins:185. Price: 18.9$

Im relativly new to the FPGA world, but given the larger numbers of LC's and I/O pins that cyclone has, I don't understand why spartan-3 is more expensive? Is there another parameter that I am missing here? Note that I don't find these huge price differences only in Digikey.

JJ

Reply to
jidan1
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Possibly because you are comparing two very different sized parts in two very different packages.

The EP1C6 is in a 240 pin QFP (read lower cost package) with about 6000 LEs. The XC3S1000 is a newer technology which should be cheaper, but you picked a BGA package (which tends to cost more than QFPs) and a

*much* larger part. The XC3S1000 has 1920 CLBs with 8 LCs each or 15,360 (compared to the 17,280 claimed by the data sheet). I think the XC3S400 would be a better comparison with about 7,168 LCs.

I suggest that you compare the Cyclone II and pick an equivalent part. How about the EP2C20F256C8 with 18,752 LCs in the same 256 pin BGA at $42.70...? Now it is only a bit cheaper.

Reply to
rickman

the price difference would be mainly due to the difference in logic density. the Xilinx XC3S1000 has more LUTs (4-input Look Up Tables) than the Altera EP1C6. if price is a concern, you might consider Lattice's low cost FPGA, the LatticeEC

Vendor Device LUTs 1pc. Price

-------- ----------- --------- ---------- Xilinx XC3S1000 15K ~$50.00 Altera EP1C6 6K ~$19.00 Lattice LFEC6 6K ~$18.00 Lattice LFEC15 15K ~$36.00

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hope this helps. rgds, bart, lattice

Reply to
bart

What about the LFE2 parts? I thought they were starting to ship now and even cheaper.

Reply to
rickman

the original question referred to distributors such as Digikey, so at the 6K and 15K LUT densities, the 130nm LatticeEC is the best fit for devices that are available from Mouser and other specialized distributors off the shelf.

you're right, the 90nm LatticeECP2 device is now sampling and is lower priced, however the smaller densities (6K-15KLUT) of the LatticeECP2 are not currently available through distributors such as Mouser.

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Reply to
bart

... while the Cyclone II also has 4 inputs per LUT AFAIR

Reply to
homoalteraiensis

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