Altera MAX II

I believe what Altera is trying to say is if you compare the biggest Max CPLD,

512 MCs, with the biggest Max II EPM2210, 1700 MCs, you will get four times the density and will only cost half the price.

Chris

This is market-speak. It is not intended to convey accurate information, but is considered successful if the reader thinks the information is there. Missing from "at half the price" is a key "per resource unit", but if someone (miss) reads this to think their devices are one eighth the price, and rushes off to design them in, that would be called 'successful promotion'.....

-jg

PS Also missing from this spin, is the fact that the cheapest previous-generation MAX devices, are actually cheaper than the cheapest MAX II devices. ie the price per resource unit has declined, but the minimum unit-cost step has actually increased, because they pruned the two smallest offerings.

Jim,

Do you mean the 32 and 64 macrocells MAX1 devices are dead? And the 128 macrocells MAX1 is cheaper than the "198 macrocell" MAX2?

Luiz Carlos.

Not yet, but they did not move forward a generation. That means if you are starting a new design, you should look carefully at vendors whose parts have moved forward recently.

The asymptope price mentioned for MAX II is $1.50, which is quite a lot higher than the cheapest MAX1. Thus if you have a smallish amount of logic, and want some of the MAX II features, or even a reduction in power, but no increase in price, then you are out of luck. Altera has left that market sector behind, but MAX II WILL have a significant impact on the biggest CPLDs.

Fortunately in the 32/64 MCell area, there are still Xilinx, Lattice, and Atmel, all with low power devices.

My point was really that when marketing trumpet 'half the price' that's not always the whole story :)

-jg

Could it perhaps be simply that there are relatively few customers looking for Max 2 features in something as small as a 32 or 64 macrocell PLD, and thus the Max 1 convers that sector perfectly adequetly? Think about what changed with the Max 2 architecture - the Max 1 use a traditional CPLD architecture, which requires routing resources that scale badly with macrocell count, making large chips proportionally very expensive. The Max

2 uses more fpga-style routing, which does scale well, making large chips proportionally cheaper. Thus the Max 2 is suited to bigger cplds, while the Max 1 suits small ones.

And what makes you think that Altera bringing out the Max 2 means they will stop making the Max 1? No doubt there will be little further development of the current Max 1 line - it's a mature product, doing a perfectly good job. The larger parts will become less popular as they are replaced by Max 2 in designs, but Altera is unlikely to pull out of the small pld market segment just because they've now got a better part for a different market segment. They are a business, and they are not stupid - as long as people want small cpld's, they'll keep making them. As to whether they will invest in making future generations of small plds which are faster, lower-power, etc. - we'll just have to wait and see.

Note - I don't have any connection with Altera other than as a user, and I also think the "four times the density at half the price" slogan was a bit misleading. And it could be that Jim has some insider information that I don't have, but I think the suggestion that they will be dropping their small cplds just because they've got better big cplds sounds like pure FUD.

You can still buy EPROMs too, which are mature products doing a perfectly good job :)

I did not say Altera are dropping the small cplds, merely noting that they did NOT move forward a generation. Others have moved their smaller cplds forward, to lower Icc and lower mA/MHz.

If you already have a Max1 device designed in, sure, why change ?

If you are doing a new design, that's very different, and the high Icc of the Max 1 families is looking 'old fashioned' against the other offerings.

-jg