Spartan-3 availability

I found this on the XILINX Website located in document:

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

1. How much will Spartan-3 devices cost? Volume pricing at the end of 2004 will be under .50 for the XC3S50 and under for the XC3S1000, and under 0 for the XCS4000 (based on

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?

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

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.

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:

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.