Pissed off with Xilinx - Spartan 3

Oh ... ;)

If you want to pay shipping I've got 4 XC3S400-PQ208 engineering samples (ony minor bugs should not affect most applications) You can have for just cost of shipping. These are pin compatible with the XC3S200 so should work on your proto

Peter Wallace

Try mentioning this link, might hurry them along a bit...

Xilinx only have CPLDs here :

and then, they do not have the new 32A and 64A, nor the MLF packages....

I did notice this line in the XC2C64 ?! listings

XC3S200-4FT256C FT -4 256 Commercial $25.55 In Stock

-jg

Except that they have '0' stock of most chips themselves. ;-(

As of a month ago, they listed a reasonable selection of in-stock Spartan3 parts for prototyping work. Apparently they decided they don't like people actually *buying* their parts.

I'm pretty much newbie to FPGAs, but I've got in mind a decent-sized project that needs quantity *1* of a TQ144 or PQ208 chip of no particular size (an XC2S50 would be underutilized and running at 48MHz) as glue between a bunch of parts. Unless I can find a way to get a part for this project, I'll be looking at other vendors. This particular project *could* turn into a very large-scale production, and with Xilinx recently dropping any sales of small quantity, plus the utter inability to get the parts anywhere else, they could very easily fall out of consideration in my design process. If I can find an appropriate Altera part at their store that's actually in stock, or something that Digikey carries, I'll be going with their parts. I like Quartus better than ISE, but I prefer ISE running on Linux...

It's also entertaining to try to find any of the Xilinx parts that Digikey actually *does* carry on the Xilinx site. AFAICT every part they actually have has been discontinued long ago.

Really pathetic, IMO.

Frequently I get asked as to why I use Altera instead of Xilinx, if there's any technical reason for it. I usually get to answer that the single reason for it is that Altera parts as considerably easier to buy. You can buy it at single quantities at local stores here for the most common parts, you can buy it at farnell for a large overprice, you can buy it at arrow in single quantities and now you can buy it also at Digikey. So I have at least four places to look at when I need a pair of them. I've already tried xilinx, liked it, but couldn't buy the pieces I needed afterwards.

Ricardo.

Erik,

The parts are not discontinued. Digikey carries them, and we still sell them. And, we still make them, too. We use our website to showcase the new products, not the old ones.

Aust> Jim Granville wrote:

So when will Xilinx add FPGAs (back?) to their BuyOnline ?

-jg

Then why, when I try to search for various part numbers found on Digikey on Xilinx's site do I get no useful results? (specifically anything under ~$50 as appropriate for my projects) For the sole reason that ISE runs on Linux I would prefer to use Xilinx parts. But when Digikey is the only way to get any parts in small quantity, and I can't even determine if the parts they actually do sell have a hope of handling my project, I start looking at putting up with Windoze and Quartus (better interface than ISE anyway, from my limited experience) and going with Altera parts.

Not to mention that all the parts on Digikey are afaict ludirously expensive for their capbilities, because they are built with such old processes.

Can some give an explanati> So when will Xilinx add FPGAs (back?) to their BuyOnline ?

That's all Xilinx would have to do to keep me (and many others from what I read) from jumping to Altera. For the record I have nothing against Altera, but without Quartus running "easily" in Linux, they're mostly out of the running otherwise. I plan on actually using Makefiles and CVS to manage heavily co-dependent C and Verilog, and that gets almost prohibitively annoying and hard with Windoze.

Jim,

Good question. I have already asked this internally. I, like you, are awaiting the results...

Aust> Aust>

Digi-Key stocks this exact part. OOPs, is is the XC2S50E. I got 5 of them a month ago to start a migration from 5 V Spartan parts. I think they now have some Spartan-3 parts, too.

Jon

Erik,

What is vcolo.com doing with FPGAs? Looks like you re-sell computer resources virtually?

See below,

Aust> Aust>

All parts are in stock here at the factory (I checked). That a distributor doesn't order them is of course troubling, and another issue. That Digikey doesn't carry the latest and greatest products may be because they offer little to no support. We prefer our distributors to earn their percentages (that they make on the parts).

Other distributors do not want to be undersold by someone who offers no services (and we don't see any benefit in that either).

If all you need are some samples, you should develop a better relationship with your local X distributor or X representative.

Hi Fred,

Wow! I miss reading comp.arch.fpga's for a few days ...

SUMMARY: Spartan-3 FPGAs are readily available. To speed delivery of Spartan-3 before 1-AUG-2005, append the part number with the four-number code "0974".

THE DETAILS: ================================ I did some checking and from appearances, you're right. But as the illustrious U.S. radioman Paul Harvey used to say, "stay tuned for the rest of the story."

Xilinx is transitioning the lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S50 through XC3S1500) from the 200 mm wafer production line to the 300 mm line. The larger density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S2000 through XC3S5000) are already built exclusively on the 300 mm line. Xilinx has a policy where we notify customers 90 days in advance of such a change and we cannot ship product from the new fab unless you specifically order us to. This gives customers

90 days to evaluate the new material to see if it affects their production systems. The details are in the following change notice.

Starting 1-AUG-2005, all orders will be shipped from the 300 mm line. Until then, all production orders for lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs are still shipped from the 200 mm line. As a consequence, lead times are artificially increasing during the transition. There are plenty of 300 mm devices in stock. However, due to our notification policy, we can't ship you one of the 300 mm devices unless you specifically ask. You can dramatically improve delivery by appending the part number with the four-number code "0974". For example, "XC3S200-4PQ208C" would become "XC3S200-4PQ208C0974".

I've also copied the various Xilinx logistics groups to make sure that our distribution product managers are aware of this issue. The lead-times need to be updated to reflect the 1-AUG-2005 change-over date.

While I have your attention (I hope), I'd also like to promote a free feature from the Xilinx MySupport web site that automatically notifies you be E-mail whenever Xilinx issues a change notice. You can also sign up to receive notices whenever we update a data sheet, application note, errata, etc. Just visit the following link.

--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/-3E FPGAs

--------------------------------- The Spartan(tm)-3 Generation: The World's Lowest-Cost FPGAs.

Hi Fred,

Wow! I miss reading comp.arch.fpga's for a few days ...

SUMMARY: Spartan-3 FPGAs are readily available. To speed delivery of Spartan-3 before 1-AUG-2005, append the part number with the four-number code "0974".

THE DETAILS: ================================ I did some checking and from appearances, you're right. But as the illustrious U.S. radioman Paul Harvey used to say, "stay tuned for the rest of the story."

Xilinx is transitioning the lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S50 through XC3S1500) from the 200 mm wafer production line to the 300 mm line. The larger density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S2000 through XC3S5000) are already built exclusively on the 300 mm line. Xilinx has a policy where we notify customers 90 days in advance of such a change and we cannot ship product from the new fab unless you specifically order us to. This gives customers

90 days to evaluate the new material to see if it affects their production systems. The details are in the following change notice.

Starting 1-AUG-2005, all orders will be shipped from the 300 mm line. Until then, all production orders for lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs are still shipped from the 200 mm line. As a consequence, lead times are artificially increasing during the transition. There are plenty of 300 mm devices in stock. However, due to our notification policy, we can't ship you one of the 300 mm devices unless you specifically ask. You can dramatically improve delivery by appending the part number with the four-number code "0974". For example, "XC3S200-4PQ208C" would become "XC3S200-4PQ208C0974".

I've also copied the various Xilinx logistics groups to make sure that our distribution product managers are aware of this issue. The lead-times need to be updated to reflect the 1-AUG-2005 change-over date.

While I have your attention (I hope), I'd also like to promote a free feature from the Xilinx MySupport web site that automatically notifies you be E-mail whenever Xilinx issues a change notice. You can also sign up to receive notices whenever we update a data sheet, application note, errata, etc. Just visit the following link.

--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/-3E FPGAs

--------------------------------- The Spartan(tm)-3 Generation: The World's Lowest-Cost FPGAs.

Hi Fred,

Wow! I miss reading comp.arch.fpga's for a few days ...

SUMMARY: Spartan-3 FPGAs are readily available. To speed delivery of Spartan-3 before 1-AUG-2005, append the part number with the four-number code "0974".

THE DETAILS: ================================ I did some checking and from appearances, you're right. But as the illustrious U.S. radioman Paul Harvey used to say, "stay tuned for the rest of the story."

Xilinx is transitioning the lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S50 through XC3S1500) from the 200 mm wafer production line to the 300 mm line. The larger density Spartan-3 FPGAs (XC3S2000 through XC3S5000) are already built exclusively on the 300 mm line. Xilinx has a policy where we notify customers 90 days in advance of such a change and we cannot ship product from the new fab unless you specifically order us to. This gives customers

90 days to evaluate the new material to see if it affects their production systems. The details are in the following change notice.

Starting 1-AUG-2005, all orders will be shipped from the 300 mm line. Until then, all production orders for lower-density Spartan-3 FPGAs are still shipped from the 200 mm line. As a consequence, lead times are artificially increasing during the transition. There are plenty of 300 mm devices in stock. However, due to our notification policy, we can't ship you one of the 300 mm devices unless you specifically ask. You can dramatically improve delivery by appending the part number with the four-number code "0974". For example, "XC3S200-4PQ208C" would become "XC3S200-4PQ208C0974".

I've also copied the various Xilinx logistics groups to make sure that our distribution product managers are aware of this issue. The lead-times need to be updated to reflect the 1-AUG-2005 change-over date.

While I have your attention (I hope), I'd also like to promote a free feature from the Xilinx MySupport web site that automatically notifies you be E-mail whenever Xilinx issues a change notice. You can also sign up to receive notices whenever we update a data sheet, application note, errata, etc. Just visit the following link.

--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/-3E FPGAs

--------------------------------- The Spartan(tm)-3 Generation: The World's Lowest-Cost FPGAs.

--
	Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

This has little to do with xilinx vs. altera, but if all of your tools for any technology are command-line capable under windows, you can use cygwin to get yourself what is essentially a unix environment with a real shell for scripting and make, gcc, etc.

The only real problems I had were that if something crashed I sometimes had to kill it from the windows task manager rather than the shell, and occasionally if I tried to build someone's generic unix package to run locally under cygwin there were some header file problems with different handling of signals or something (cygwin is a unique *nix flavor, it's not precisely the same programming model as linux).

Much of the discussion recently on availability seems to be from people who will only ever want small quantities - distributors tend not to be interested in such customers.... As Xilinx already has a web-shop set up, it seems that this would be the ideal way to make small quantities available.

Hi Erik,

What's your problem with Quartus on Linux? Since 4.0 it's been running flawlessly (well, as flawless as its Windows counterpart) and quickly on RedHat, Gentoo, Suse, and even Knoppix (i.e. Debian) in this little computer room. Four completely different distributions.

The only thing you may need to do is to comment out a line in the adm/qenv.csh file (around line 110), but only if you're not running Red Hat but _are_ running a 2.6 kernel with a glibc that has NPTL support compiled in.

The only trouble I'm having is when somebody sends me a project to work on that was created on Windows and the filename does not exactly match the module name, but that's mainly an irritation.

Also, the tools are TCL scriptable, generate Makefile-friendly .done files - so what's your problem?

Best regards,

Ben

Nothing. I'm starting to experiment with FPGA stuff on my own, but I co-own vcolo.com and that's the address I use.

FWIW for anyone who might be interested, we user User-Mode Linux to give customers everything from the kernel down totally dedicated and isolated, so you can run *any* [legal] software you want, unlike a classic "VPS" (e.g. Virtuozzo) or web hosting. Prices reflect the shared-resources nature, but performance tends not to show it.

The problem is that I don't *have* a distributor or representative. I have Digikey, Mouser, Newark, etc.

I'm screwing around with developing stuff with FPGAs because it's cool and I have some product ideas I want to see if I can make work. I need q.1 of a given part as appropriate for my prototyping (think home-etched boards, maybe a toaster-oven soldering kit if I can't pull off hand soldering of TQFP/SSOP stuff), using free tools like ISE. *IF* my idea becomes viable, whichever FPGA gets used in my prototype will likely be the one used in production. I have several ideas that AFAICT are *very* commercially viable, if I can build them. Being a software guy, I've got a lot of hardware stuff still to learn, but if I can't even get parts, I'm not gonna get anywhere in the first place.

Someone else mentioned that Digikey seems to have some XC2S parts finally, which is good, but comments elsewhere indicated that the startup sequencing of the Spartan2's can be more of a pain to deal with than the 3-rail requirement of the Spartan3's... They're also much lower density, which may not be a problem in some of my design ideas but will be in others.