Xilinx webshop

Bump!

So, no comment from the otherwise very active Xilinx representants?

I'll rephrase my question:

Will the Xilinx webshop get an increase or decrease in the the selection of FPGAs in the near future? Of course, a decrease from the single part would mean FPGA shop gone...

I just want to find a place to buy those nifty chips, you know :-)

DJ

--

webshop.

The situation will get better, much better. This is work in progress, so I do not want to create confusion or overly optimistic (early) expectations. But we are (painfully) aware that something must be done, and it will. Witness the improvements earlier this week... Peter Alfke

That's good to hear (despite warnings about early optimism :-)). I look forward to painless low volume chip-shopping.

Thank you for the hint!

DJ

All,

Face it, Peter and I both are absolute true believers in on-line shopping. And we believe that buying FPGAs should be no more painful than buying a book at Amazon.com.

Sure, if you want 25 of them, or if you need support and services, you may not want to buy online, but rather through your local and helpful distributor who will actually send the FAE to you to help (if needed).

(A side note, ever try to return something non-technical and totally trivial bought online? Advice: just don't even try it, it is often too painful with the way most web retailing is done today. They get your credit card number, they ship, they bill. That is about all they can do, or will do.)

That said, we do have to balance all the requirements. After all, we have agreements with many distributors, representatives, and other partners. We have IOS 9000, ISO 14001, TS16949 (basically the only FPGA company with this pedegree of Quality Standards approvals). We have international customers. We have tax laws to meet. We have export/import laws that have to be considered.

Not too mention offering the excellent quality of service all of our customers have grown to expect. We not only have to have an online shop, but the damned BEST online shop!

Since you can buy anything you like on line (basically), it seems all too easy.

In reality, it is a difficult and complex issue. There are many pits to fall in.

So, optomism is great, but patience is a virtue we may have to ask you to indulge us with while we work our way through the maze of issues to allow you to simply just be a click away from your parts ...

Aust>

You might sell more than you think. One common issue with Distis, is many don't like to break SPQ's

- so that places a quantize effect on availability. It means there will be both pilot run, and also run-rounding needs.

Programmable logic is stocked much more poorly than generic microcontrollers, simply because the range changes so rapidly.

TIP for Xilinx: Put the SPQ on the webstore (somewhere), so users can see at a glance if contacting the Disti is likely to be helpfull, or a waste of time...

I just looked at my XC2C32 data sheet, plenty of order codes (19!), but not a single SPQ!...

-jg

NuHorizons has a decent online store selling most varieties of Xilinx FPGAs/CPLDs. Check them out

--Neeraj

Jim Granville wrote:

Configuration devices in the webshop would be appreciated!

On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jun 2005 09:35:03 +0000 (UTC)) it happened Uwe Bonnes wrote in :

I would rather have these in the FPGA itself, as flash. 1) better security 2) saves on chip costs 3) saves on PCB cost 4) saves work on power up stuff 5) saves time 6) saves shipping cost 7) saves on PCB space 8) and if you use a 739 pin connector like AMD processors, then you can just send customers an upgrade, they send old one back for re-programming. 9) more reliable

Very creative! You should work for Actel / LatticeXP-marketing ;-)

I would reduce your list mainly to better security. E.g. it is simpler to socket and ship a $1 8pin SPI-flash than the $$$$ 1000pin FPGA... But upgrade via RS-232 or something, as we do, is even better...

Thomas

"Jan Panteltje" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:1119611642.a327c9d5e28eb26f262ca1e83907e569@teranews...

you missed 0) Drops performance.

There are a ton of reasons why FPGA+Flash on the same die is a compromise, but if we step back a little, and look at other industries the FPGA sector can learn a few things.

If you see the latest AMD/Intel etc devices, they include many power supply decouplers - so they are more correctly modules, than silicon chips. Doing that becomes a packaging question, not a die FAB trade off.

FPGA vendors _could_ do that, relatively easily - but could it be that the Config costs then become more visible, and the low 2006 price claims are harder to make ?

Stacked die are also moving into the mainstream, and they are now eliminating the old bonding wires. See

This seems to offer a serious speed advantage, as you do not need all the pin resource overhead, and PCB trace overhead. PINS have to have ESD ratings, and large fets to drive many pF of load, a well as the inevitable multiple driver options. Often this load-power dominates over the node-power in the device. Chuck all that overboard so your connection is die-die, and optimised for just what it needs to do, and you can see the advantage.

Imagine a stacked die FPGA, with a large VFast SRAM, and Config device ?

-jg

Jim Granville wrote: ...

You're dreaming :-)

-- Uwe Bonnes snipped-for-privacy@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt

--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

Of course, but it is realistic of what might be on our desks in 2-3 yrs time ? [Which means we should be thinking about it now, and if one FPGA vendor sees this, and the others miss it == big lead]

Other industries have this stacked die, today - so this allows some inertia in the smaller, more inwardly looking, FPGA sector :)

-jg

We are not just inward-looking. Of course we also look at the possibilities of stacked die. But the applications flexibility that makes FPGAs so great, works against die stacking. Pentiums and cell phones are more "single purpose" where the manufacturer can aim at a well-defined application without too many variations. FPGAs are used all over the place, in all sorts of constellations. Which one should we concentate on, which one to ignore? Just my opinion... Peter Alfke

Neither Configuration memory, nor fast SRAM are single purpose, they are used all over the place....

and a key point of this, is it does NOT impact those FPGA users who do not want it (unlike the present on die fruit-fest)...

Consider : The price of Config memory is (at last) moving to match mainstream SPI memory devices, some vendors even employ std SPI memory.

Config within the package can raise the security-level hot button.

Choices of "how much config?" are relatively simple, falling into two classes - everyone needs enough to load the device itself, and some need more to also hold the boot code of a soft CPU.

Soft CPUs have a BIG drawback of needing off-chip code memory. Think of 256K-512K-1MBytes of 2-3ns SRAM, and the EMC and Speed benefits the average Soft CPU user could reap from using this ?

-jg