Spartan-3 availability

I found this on the XILINX Website
located in document: http://www.xilinx.com/products/spartan3/faq105_s3.pdf


13. When will Spartan-3 devices be available?
Spartan-3 samples began shipping in March. First available devices are the
XC3S1000 and XC3S50.

14. How much will Spartan-3 devices cost?
Volume pricing at the end of 2004 will be under $3.50 for the XC3S50 and
under $20 for the XC3S1000, and under $100 for the XCS4000 (based on
250K unit quantities).

The XC3S50 and XC3S1000 parts have been sampling, but you have to be a
major customer to get them for the most part.  Also, there are
significant errata with these parts so that the production date has
changed from 2Q03 to 1Q04.  

The XC3S200, 400 and 1500 are slated to be in production in 4Q03.  You
should be able to get samples in Q3 (any time now).  So you might want
to bump your design up to the XC3S200, at least for prototyping.  

As for the idea that they advertised a new family before it was
available, yes, that is actually very, very common in the semiconductor
market.  Everyone does it.  The question is how much in advance do they
advertise and how good is their track record in getting the parts out on
time?  

Manfred,
XC3S50 are available (I inadvertently posted publicly that I have some
in my drawer). The only 3S50 available for several months in the near
future are the ones without BlockRAM and DLL. It's not a defect problem:
The original decision had been to leave out BRAM and DLL, for cost
reasons, on this smallest member of the family. I think there also is a
question of how many pins are 3.3V tolerant on these Early Silicon
parts.This was later changed, and the "real" 3S50 will have BRAM and DCM
and be 3.3V tolerant, but it isn't here yet.  The ES devices are
therefore marked with a trailing J, to distinguish them from the later
"real" part.
All ES parts, by definition, come with an errata sheet, and distributors
prefer not to deal with all this complexity and confusion. Contact your
local FAE.

I hope this explains the situation.
Peter Alfke, Xilinx Applications
=================================
Manfred Kraus wrote:

I got a call from Insight. Of course I can get samples of the ESJ-part
immediately.
The Problem was, that I didn't ask for ESJ-Parts. They assumed I know what
to ask for.

Thanks to Peter for clarifying this.

-Manfred Kraus

mkraus_at_cesys_dot_com

: I got a call from Insight. Of course I can get samples of the ESJ-part
: immediately.
: The Problem was, that I didn't ask for ESJ-Parts. They assumed I know what
: to ask for.

The problem is also, that distributors often ask for an exact number, while
the user mostly needs _any_ part with only few constraints. That way, you
have to prepare a lot of fallback fits, and ask the distributor for each.

If they could cope with wildcards in the part number, things would be
easier...

Bye

Eventough they claim that XC3S1000 is about $20, actual price at avnet.com is
about:

1 - 24 @ $248.6000
25 - 99 @ $191.4000

So, what is the price for the quantity of 1K-10K of XC3S1000?

about:


You are not going to get a good price on a part that is so far from
production.  From what I have read about the expected prices, I would
guess that you can expect a price below $30 at those volumes.  But the
XC3S1000 is now one of the later parts to be in production and may not
be available until 1Q04 or later.  Even if they make the 4Q03
prediction, the price will likely not come down much until 1Q04 or
later.