Pissed off with Xilinx - Spartan 3

"Leon Heller" <leon.heller@dsl.pipex.com> wrote in message 
news:8MmdnX4F-OA07TjfRVnysw@pipex.net...
> "Fred" <Fred@nospam.com> wrote in message 
> news:42a56b34$0$23915$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk...
>>I think the speed of your sale suggests emphasises they're more like 
>>rocking horse droppings.
>
> I bought them immediately, not because I might have trouble getting them 
> (I haven't checked with Memec) but because Thomas was selling them cheaper 
> than I can get them for, and it's less trouble than dealing with Memec. I 
> don't have an account with them, which always seems to cause problems.

I contacted Memec and they won't have any XC3S200-4VQ100C devices for over 
five weeks! Moroever, they will cost me quite a lot more than Thomas wanted 
for his excess stock. It does look like there is a supply problem with the 
smaller Spartan 3 parts, as well as the larger ones.

Leon 

Gabor wrote:
> 
> Sylvain Munaut wrote:
> 
>>>And this is what they call "low cost". I'm not angry, I'm just very tired
>>>of having more and more problems to get the FPGAs I need. As far as I know
>>>XC3S4000 costs around 150$ for "small" quantities, I don't think it has to
>>>be considered a high-end device.
>>
>>Doh who told you that ?
>>I bought like 10 of XC3S400 FT256 for <30$ piece
>>
>>
>>	Sylvain
> 
> 
> Count the zeroes...
> 

Oh ... ;)

On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 10:01:02 -0700, Fred wrote:

> 14 week lead time for samples for the XC3S200.  How can you prototype
> with that?
> 
> It makes worry even more when it comes to manufacture where I might need
> quantity.
 
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

Fred wrote:

> Thanks for your offer but I need the pins.
> 
> Xilinx have their buy online store but they only sell CPLDs there.  A reply 
> to an email I sent to "online store" said talk to your distributor and sales 
> office which are things I had already done.  I have searched in vain but 
> can't get any hint of sourcing samples off their website.  Do you have any 
> links?

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

http://www.altera.com/buy/devices/buy-devices.html

Xilinx only have CPLDs here :

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/onlinestore.jsp?sGlobalNavPick=PURCHASE

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

Jim Granville wrote:
> Try mentioning this link, might hurry them along a bit...
> http://www.altera.com/buy/devices/buy-devices.html
Except that they have '0' stock of most chips themselves. ;-(

> Xilinx only have CPLDs here :
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.

Erik Walthinsen escreveu:
> Jim Granville wrote:
> 
>> Try mentioning this link, might hurry them along a bit...
>> http://www.altera.com/buy/devices/buy-devices.html
> 
> Except that they have '0' stock of most chips themselves. ;-(
> 
>> Xilinx only have CPLDs here :
> 
> 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.

Austin

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> Jim Granville wrote:
> 
>> Try mentioning this link, might hurry them along a bit...
>> http://www.altera.com/buy/devices/buy-devices.html
> 
> Except that they have '0' stock of most chips themselves. ;-(
> 
>> Xilinx only have CPLDs here :
> 
> 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.

Austin Lesea wrote:

> 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.

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

Austin Lesea wrote:
>> 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.
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 explanation as to why Digikey does not even offer the 
newer parts in the first place?  I gather there are apparently problems 
producing the chips in sufficient quantity, but that's never stopped 
Digikey from at least listing a part as non-stock before.

Jim Granville wrote:
> 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...

Austin

Jim Granville wrote:

> Austin Lesea wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> So when will Xilinx add FPGAs (back?) to their BuyOnline ?
> -jg
>