Xilinx Spartan-3 Supply Issues?

[snip]

I see that our friendly competitor's spin machine has been at it again.

UMC (not IBM) is and always was the primary manufacturing facility for Spartan-3 FPGAs. It is true that other Xilinx product lines used IBM as a production line and that Xilinx built some initial Spartan-3 FPGA engineering samples at IBM but there is no connection between IBM and Spartan-3 FPGA production. Xilinx will likely be in production on 90 nm for

4 quarters and 2M+ units before the nearest competitor.

Xilinx has shipped over 600K Spartan-3 FPGAs to date, mostly to fulfill some initial high-volume customers. This quarter, Xilinx will produce another

600K+ units and will stock distributors with Spartan-3 FPGAs in about 3 weeks. By the end of September, there should be relatively good inventories up through the XC3S1500. The XC3S200 and XC3S400 are in full production now with the XC3S50, XC3S1000, and XC3S1500 starting production this month. The XC3S2000 through XC3S5000 will be available 1H05.

The XC3S50 and XC3S1000 are the two most recent additions to the product family and are presently ramping for full production. XC3S50 ES parts are available through Xilinx distributor, but may not be in their inventories just yet depending on package style. The XC3S50 has four 18K block RAMs, two Digital Clock Managers (DCMs), and is 3.3V compatible.

You will not receive the older XC3S50J unless you specifically order the 'J' device. Xilinx stopped building the 'J' engineering samples quite awhile ago.

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

Tel: (408) 626-7447 E-mail: snipped-for-privacy@xilinx.com

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

[snip]

I forgot to mention one other item.

If you want to create some initial designs for your XC3S50 application without needing to build hardware, you might want to investigate the Spartan-3 Starter Kit Board. It has an XC3S200 FPGA in the FT256 package, plus a host of other interfaces, 1M of SRAM, a JTAG download cable, plus software. The board is in stock and sells for $99 plus applicable tax and shipping.

Spartan-3 Starter Kit Board

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

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

Hello Steven,

Thanks for the input.

Our Avnet distributors have been real good about providing data books and eval boards so I'm well equipped in that sense.

My concerns are for moving things to production. To be totally honest with you, this is the first I've heard of the status of the 3S50ES part -- I was told that Avnet already has stock on them!

I'll be sure to confirm part numbers with them.

In the mean time -- I'll have to admit that the Spartan IIE appears to be a better fit for the application (3.3 compatibility required, possible 5v inputs, no need for two LDOs) as it's not logic or computationally intensive. It's just too bad it costs more than the

3S50ES part!

Thanks again,

Gordon

[snip]

Avnet likely does have some XC3S50 ES devices in stock. If not, they can easily obtain them for you.

Just to be clear, Spartan-3 FPGAs support 3.3V I/O. Likewise, you can interface a Spartan-3 I/O to a 5V input signal using a 300 ohm or greater series current-limiting resistor. Essentially, you want to limit the voltage at the pin to less than 4.05V and the current to roughly less than

10 mA. The goal is to keep the I/O diodes off.

The Spartan-3 can drive a 5V device assuming that the device has TTL-style inputs and that the FPGA I/O uses a 3.3V supply.

You are correct that Spartan-3 provides lower cost per gate and lower cost per I/O than comparable devices.

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

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

By the way, I have one of these and it's great.

- a