Spartan 3 errata and pricing

That is news to me. Over a month ago, I was quoted a delivery of around

8 weeks IIRC. The ES parts I could have from stock. The part I was asking about was the XC3S400, so perhaps the 1000 is a bit behind. Did they tell you *when* you could expect production parts?

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[snip] [snip]

At present, there are no known errata for the XC3S1000 FPGAs. Errata for the other Spartan-3 FPGAs is available to registered users of the Xilinx Support web site at ...

For pricing and availability, I would recommend contacting your local Xilinx sales representative, listed at the following link.

If I remember Texas geography correctly, Richardson is close to Dallas.

Bonser-Philhower Sales

689 W. Renner Rd., Suite 101 Richardson, TX 75080 (972) 234-8438 Fax: (972) 437-0897

Alternatively, the local Xilinx distributor should also have the same information.

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

--------------------------------- Spartan-3: Make it Your ASIC

A little more help finding it would be appreciated, as without seeing the errata I can't tell whether the XC3S400 ES parts will be acceptable for my design, or whether I'll have to wait for non-ES.

Thanks, Eric

Aaaargh! Looks like the search function was broken. I just checked it a few minutes ago and all was working.

To save time, here is a specific link.

How can I view errata documentation and receive an alert if it changes?

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

--------------------------------- Spartan-3: Make it Your ASIC

for

for

Hi Steve, Hi Eric I was trying to retrieve the errata for spartan 3 FPGAs but got this message instead.

"Sorry... Technical difficulties with the Xilinx.com web site have been solved. If you are continuing to have difficulty accessing Xilinx.com, you may need to exit your browser software and restart it. Please accept our apologies for any difficulties you have experienced. "

I tried restarting my browser but to of no avail. Can anybody send me the errata for Spartan 3? If there is no errata for the device XC3s1000 FG456, is it safe to assume that the device is into production and NOT Engineering Samples?

thanks Krishna Kumar

[snip]

The errata for the XC3S1000 essentially says that there are no know issues.

I reported the problem that you encountered to our web team.

Just to be clear, the XC3S1000 is presently only available with an "ES" marking, indicating that the devices are "Engineering Samples". The full production release on the XC3S1000 happens later this month (August 2004). At this stage, there is little if any difference between the two other than the non-ES devices are fully qualified for production.

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

--------------------------------- Spartan-3: Make it Your ASIC

All,

Steve may not be in a position to elaborate, but I will.

"Engineering Sample" can, and does mean different things. We are working on a way to be more communicative, but until we have a plan that we know works, we have to wait.

In the meantime, understand that ES means different things in time.

It first means that the part has undergone a basic level of testing, for both functionality and speed, but we have not qualified the process, not performed the ESD testing, and do not have the guaranteed numbers in the datasheet yet (TBD's or missing max's etc.).

That is pretty obvious: we just do not know, so we let you know what we know (errata if any), and what we do not know.

Then, after the first part gets its all of its verification and characterization done, but the test program isn't complete, and/or the qualification program isn't done (it just takes time in the 'easy bake' oven) we still have to make the part as something other than production. This is typically 14 weeks after first announced ES. For example the Virtex 4 LX25 is shipping ES now, and is ~ 7 weeks old. In another 7 weeks, it will be old hat, and what we know list will be very long indeed, and what we do not know list will be at 0 items. What we don't know that we don't know will also be a very short list, as these end up being found by customers (so we intentionally test the daylights (and nighlights) out of it).

After that, when parts are awaiting the final crossing of it's and dotting of i's in the reports, it is still marked ES.

So, if I wanted to know how confident I should be about a part, I would find out how long it has been since any part in the family first sampled. If that is greater than 14 weeks, then I would be pretty confident that what is disclosed (if an errata at all) is complete, and

99%+ accurate.

Once the qual report is done (available from our QA group, and posted on the website when a part goes into production), I would be totally confident.

Austin