getting good deals on small qty?

Hello,

I am going to buy about five Spartan3 XC3S100Es along with config ROMs
in the next few days. I may be ordering several hundred more parts in
the coming months, but then again I may not be ordering any more. It
all depends how successful the prototypes are.

I've never dealt with distributors before so the whole concept seems
kind of foreign to me. I am not looking for someone to hold my hand in
choosing parts or someone to help me build a working design or anything
like that, I just want someone to ship me the parts I need. If only
Amazon or Newegg sold FPGAs :D

Anyway I've checked the Nuhorizons, Digikey and Avnet online
inventories. Only Nuhorizons has the XC3S100Es in stock, priced at 9.88
each. Since the price of these parts in big qty. is something like $2,
I can't help but feel that the $9.88 price is kind of high.

Are there any alternatives to getting the parts I need without paying
400% markup? I'm not so concerned about the extra cost of the prototype
parts, but more about the cost of the parts I may buy later.

Is it pretty much a reality of the business that the small volume guy
gets crapped on?

oh the 9.88 USD price is ok. The marketing price of 2USD is for 1
Million/year for orders shipped 2007 or something alike. For orders of
100 or 1000 dont expect much less than 9USD per piece.

In other words the 400% markup in this case is "normal" - do not expect
some disti to sell you with 100% e.g. at price of 4USD, its just not
possible.

Antti

Un bel giorno shawnn@gmail.com digit�:

> Are there any alternatives to getting the parts I need without paying
> 400% markup?

Consider yourself very lucky. The main issue, especially with bigger FPGA,
is that you have to buy at least 100 pieces (and wait two months for them
to ship anyway). Neither Xilinx nor Altera give a crap on small enterprises
that can't afford to blindly spend 10-20 k$ just to make one prototype,
maybe for nothing.

I'm going to give up using FPGA for bigger projects. When I need a model
that is available on digikey it's ok, but when more gates are needed, I
have to look for more affordable technologies.

-- 
asd

Thanks for the replies Antti and Mr. lamah.

I have read some posts about "gray market" sources for chips. What /
where are these sources? I already know about eBay of course.

The distributor is not operating a charity. Selling you 5 chips for
about $ 50 is hardly a very profitable transaction, considering
paperwork etc. These are not little 7/11 stores...
Expecting to buy 5 chips at the million-quantity price is unrealistic.
The $40 difference between a real and a completely unrealistic price is
not too bad.

Now, if you complain that you cannot get the chips at all, that would
be a valid complaint.
$ 40 is not!
Peter Alfke, Xilinx

Thanks for the reply Peter.

As I stated earlier, I'm not so concerned about the extra cost of the
prototype parts, but rather about the cost of the 100-200 parts I may
buy later. $40 is obviously not worth complaining about.

Why is it that Newegg can get me the latest $300 AMD or Intel desktop
processor in qty. 1 without a 400% markup over list, yet such markups
are normal when buying $300 worth of FPGAs? Not a flame, I'm genuinely
curious to know.

different price-break levels.

A 100 pcs is peanuts, no discount
B 1000 pcs is peanuts, no discount
C 10000 pcs order buys some discount
D 500,000 order placed 14 months advance buys real nice price.

price difference C vs D is still huge.

as you are talking 10-100-1000 prices there is nothing much the disti
could do.
its still not much profit for them.
I was surprised when SiLabs said they have flat pricing for 1 to 1000
well that is damn good price, seems that the are selling qty 1 for the
price
that you would expect for qty 1000,

9USD for S3e is already notsobad,
if you are lucky you get some cents off that price for qty 1000
but dont expect large difference.

for 100qty almost no discount. some penny maybe.

Antti

> The distributor is not operating a charity. Selling you 5 chips for
> about $ 50 is hardly a very profitable transaction, considering
> paperwork etc. These are not little 7/11 stores...
> Expecting to buy 5 chips at the million-quantity price is unrealistic.
> The $40 difference between a real and a completely unrealistic price is
> not too bad.
>
> Now, if you complain that you cannot get the chips at all, that would
> be a valid complaint.
> $ 40 is not!
> Peter Alfke, Xilinx


One thing I would complain about is being forced to buy a MOQ of 48
devices when building prototypes.

I wouldn't have any problems paying normal_1off_price * 1.5 to be able to
get any quantity I want, even if this meant a longer lead time than
normal.

(BTW, this is a complaint at all FPGA distributors).


Nial.



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www.nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk

You can get most Altera parts from Digikey or from Altera directly,
which I think is basically still Digikey.  I recommend you use Altera
until Xilinx gets their act together with their online store.  (Thanks
Peter and Austin for pushing for that)

PC processors are a very different market than FPGAs.  They have a
different pricing structure as a result.  The list prices target
individual purchase.  There are significant deals to be had, though, if
you want to buy millions of them.  Microsoft certainly didn't pay full
price for all of those processors they bought from Intel for the XBox.

Newegg can offer good prices on PC processors because millions of
people buy individual processors from them.  That is the fundamental
difference.  The scale is enough that with individual purchases they
can be priced pretty low.  The other reason they can be priced
differently is that most processors end up in a different group of
peoples' hands.  Most processors are consumed by people running Windows
wanting to browse the web, read and write email and balance their check
book.  FPGAs are all targetting engineers.  Since engineers tend to
push the technology, FPGA vendors have a significant amount of support
to provide, whereas PC processor manufacturers mostly only deal with
the distributors and pre-release developers.

You can't expect this to change.  It is the way it will be due to
different markets.  As for the minimum quantity problem, try Altera or
Lattice.  They both seem to be pretty good about getting the parts that
you need at good prices.

-Arlen

Nial-

> I wouldn't have any problems paying normal_1off_price * 1.5 to be able to
> get any quantity I want, even if this meant a longer lead time than
> normal.

Gallen offers an insightful, detailed explanation.

Or you can apply the "Mom Test"  for high tech products.  If your Mom
knows what it is (even vaguely) and might actually have a need to buy
one, then you can get qty 1 at normal price or close to it.  If not,
then its out of the mainstream and its cost is going to be off the
chart.

-Jeff