Design development costs for FPGA on PCI board (sorry if slightly off-topic)

Dear All,

After investigating the price of FPGA PCI boards for a project, it seems the cost of a board is typically 3 to 4 times the component cost for mid-range FPGA's like Xilinx 2V3000.

Of course board manufacturers have overheads and need to make a profit

- my point isn't to complain about their Gross Profit margin.

Rather, at what point is it better to meet the initial capital expenditure of having your own board designed, thereafter only having to meet board manufacturing costs?

For example, just how much design time and cost does it take to create a board with -

Quicklogic or PLXTech PCI Bridge Single FPGA A PROM Single bank of DDR memory.

Surely this type of requirement is common and would not require months of development time or am I being naive? :)

Any comments appreciated...

Thanks,

Andy.

Well, it really depends on how many boards you need, and whether the hardware design on the off-the-shelf board meets your requirements.

Regarding the former, it's simply the classic make/buy decision. If you need a handful boards, buying them makes sense because you can concentrate your development efforts into the FPGA and you know (or at least hope!) that the board design itself is stable. If you need a lot of boards, then it may very well make sense to spin your own.

Rolling your own board requires a different skill set from designing an FPGA, and if you don't have those skills (and the software tools), then you have to hire them and that cost may bust your budget. You also have to learn about (or have in place) the entire manufacturing process, including purchasing, board fab, stuffing, everything, which will distract you from your FPGA design :)

Of course, if no off-the-shelf board meets your needs, then your choice is clear.

Besides, a product that costs only three times the bill-of-materials is kinda cheap :)

-a