Number of FPGA users?

Austin's always banging on about his 200000+ seats. ;-) "We have 200,000+ seats of software out there,"

Maybe the most annoying thing about Usenet is people not googling before they post? Much more irritating than top-posting, don'tcha think? ;-) In jest, Symsx.

Thank you for the link.

Well, I did search, but I was searching for number of licenses and similar terms. Searching for seats did not occur to me at the time.

Petter

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

I was just pulling your leg, Petter! I only knew what to search for because Austin had posted so recently in a thread I was interested in. I remember wondering if the other 199,999 designers have as much 'fun' with the software as I do! ;-) Good luck with your research, All the best, Syms.

Maybe a more interesting number would be the paid "seats" rather than total including free downloads. I would think this is a fairer representation of actual use of the product. I myself have downloaded many free programs that I rarely or never use. I've also downloaded WebPack even though I use the full Foundation ISE, just so I could run iMPACT on a production computer. Xilinx didn't seem to think about production when they made the install scripts on the ISE CD-ROMs.

Gabor,

What you refer to is the number of actual seats of software in use.

That is hard for even us to estimate.

If we remove all free downloads, that is unfair as many of them are being used to design with our parts.

If we remove all software shipped to universities and schools, that is probably fair.

I think the point of this is that Xilinx has more seats of software out there than anyone else (in our field).

I have heard that at any given moment there are 20,000 or more designs actively being done. If the average number of seats of software to support that is 2 (a conservative number for a million gate design), then that is 40,000 active being used seats of software. Maybe the number is 2.5? 3.5? No one knows. Even the 20,000 is a WAG.

Maybe someone here could let us know how many seats of software is typically used per design. It would be an interesting thing to know.

There are those that haven't started yet, but are playing with the software, and those that have finished, and have to occasionally go back and fix/add something to the design. Do we count those? I say yes.

(Strange to see a thread where I am quoted ... and it really isn't directed to me at all.)

Aust> Maybe a more interesting number would be the paid

Not to those at Univ or schools :)

or, one designer could be responsible for 100+ designs ( 0.01 x ) ?

So what did your comment "We have 200,000+ seats of software out there," actually mean ?

Did that mean "over the last 10 years, over 200,000 downloads have been started ", or does this also include a factor, like for Magazine Circulation, where they count sales, then multiply by a re-read factor to get a better sounding number for advertising sales ?

What about CPLD vs FPGA users - does that matter ?

A better metric might be "Number of Active Customers" [Who have brought one or more devices in the last 12 months]. That could sensible split FPGA and CPLD. That is easy to derive from direct and disti info, and gives a reasonable minimum for Alive SW Seats

-jg

Jim,

I do not know the interval, but it is certainly not what we shipped in the last 20 years!

I believe it was either shipped in a year, or a quarter, but maybe someone else inside Xilinx will let me know. I was reading press releases as an engineer just like you were.

I already gave you the WAG of 20,000 designs happening at the present moment in time, and that WAG is primarily from disti's, rep's, factory, etc. Now how much stock can you put in numbers that you get from people who get paid to report big numbers? Are they being completely honest with us? I have to assume so. Are the customers being honest with their reps?

But, all must be taken with a very critical eye.

Regardless, we have a lot of folks using our tools and parts (as shown by our quarterly fiscal results).

Other folks keep track of overall market share, but the ones that do tell me that our share continues to grow. Others sometimes have a good quarter in growth (get ahead of us by a 1/2% Q-Q), but overall, we are still doing the kind of job that keeps engineers voting with their designs being done with Xilinx parts.

That is fine with me, and we always remain open and willing to improve to make the engineer's life and their products even better.

Austin

Jim Granville wrote: