FPGA under $10 ?

[sangar]

Hello All,

I did reverse engineering a board that had cyclone FPGA but I am not sure on the exact part number...Based on dimension, I have found EP4CE15F23 (343 Ios and 484 pinsBGA) as an equivalent by looking into cyclone FPGA family... Nowhere, the problem is that the FPGA cost us $43/per chip...Could you suggest if any other vendor provides an FPGA with the same pin count and price under $10...


Thanks,
Muthu

[AndreZheng]

The QMTECH also provides the core board using EP4CE15F23. It only costs 17.9$. So the price like 43$ is really not reasonable.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/QMTECH-Altera-Intel-FPGA-Core-Board-Cyclone-IV-CycloneIV-EP4CE15-SDRAM-Development-Board/32949281189.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.2.22a37f4cQ5dHdo&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5_10065_10068_10890_5730315_319_10546_317_10548_10696_453_10084_454_10083_10618_5729215_10307_538_537_536_10059_10884_10887_100031_321_322_5735415_10103-10890,searchweb201603_51,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=bb6d6a13-36c1-420c-bd1e-8700caa7b49f-0&algo_pvid=bb6d6a13-36c1-420c-bd1e-8700caa7b49f

[sangar]

Hi AndreZheng,

Thanks...Could I get the chip only ?.



Regards,
muthu

[AndreZheng]

Hi, what I want to say is that chip is not so expensive. You may contact local vendors for the chip.

[ogden]

The QMTECH also provides the core board using EP4CE15F23. It only costs 17.9$. So the price like 43$ is really not reasonable.

Sure! Distributor list prices of FPGA's and other expensive IC's shall be considered for prototypes and small runs where BOM cost in general does not matter. If you are serious about manufacturing - you shall contact manufacturer directly, negotiate your contract-based price based on (binding) sales forecast. After that you buy component through your preferred distributor, for price agreed, at volume agreed.

[james_s]

I don't know how those Chinese companies do it, I have several different kinds of FPGA dev boards that cost less delivered than the bare FPGA chip costs to buy. Several of my projects have been daughterboards that plug into basic dev boards because it's significantly cheaper than buying the IC to put on my own single board.

[Kilrah]

The whole explanation for that is in the post just before yours. Manufacturers will give WAY better than unity pricing - BUT you've got to buy tens of thousands of chips.

[james_s]

It's amazing just how much better though. I mean to be able to get an entire ready to use board including shipping to my door for less than the price of one bare IC is crazy, FPGAs are the only components I've dealt with where this is the case. You'd think some of those same Chinese companies would buy a zillion ICs and sell the bare chips at reasonable prices too.

[ogden]

You'd think some of those same Chinese companies would buy a zillion ICs and sell the bare chips at reasonable prices too.

Check this link where you can get single FPGA for 7$

[Kilrah]

You'd think some of those same Chinese companies would buy a zillion ICs and sell the bare chips at reasonable prices too.

It's very likely strictly prohibited in the purchase contract they have for the parts. High discount is because the manufacturer agrees to strongly "subsidise" the sale of the chips for a devboard becasue said devboard will get new customers into their ecosystem who will eventually need to buy parts at normal price for their projects/products in the future.
 
I backed a crowdfunding campaign that was a bit like that - the guys spent 2 years to develop a $100 devboard with a chip that had a $150 unit retail price, didn't seem realistic or possible but it did work out.

[langwadt]

It's amazing just how much better though. I mean to be able to get an entire ready to use board including shipping to my door for less than the price of one bare IC is crazy, FPGAs are the only components I've dealt with where this is the case. You'd think some of those same Chinese companies would buy a zillion ICs and sell the bare chips at reasonable prices too.

I suspect the reason for it is that when you buy an FPGA of what you pay for is mostly the NRE in architecture and tools

[cdev]

The vendor if it signs a contract with a manufacturer may have agreed to not sell raw parts to certain countries where they normally command higher prices.

[mark03]

It's amazing just how much better though. I mean to be able to get an entire ready to use board including shipping to my door for less than the price of one bare IC is crazy, FPGAs are the only components I've dealt with where this is the case. You'd think some of those same Chinese companies would buy a zillion ICs and sell the bare chips at reasonable prices too.

I find this depressingly common with other components too.  Just off the top of my head, certain display tech and GPS modules.  To have more than a 2-4x price ratio between qty 1 and qty 1 million, for any widget manufactured in large quantities, seems to me ethically questionable in an age of automated e-commerce.  Why is it necessary to make thousands of percent profit on sales to hobbyists or small entrepreneurs?  And does that tiny fraction of their total sales even make a difference to the corporate bottom line?

[james_s]

Well it doesn't really matter to me, I just end up designing my project as a daughterboard that plugs into a cheap dev board since the dev board is little more than a breakoutboard with a power supply, oscillator and config ROM. The only thing I don't like is that most of the more powerful boards also have SDRAM which is useless for most of the stuff I'm interested in but it's so cheap it can just sit there I guess.

[TimCambridge]

Not the pin count, but under $10 in quantity 1:

https://octopart.com/search?q=lcmxo2-1200hc-4&start=0

[PCB.Wiz]

FPGA under $10 ?

Sure, plenty of choices under $10, but....

... I have found EP4CE15F23 (343 Ios and 484 pinsBGA) as an equivalent by looking into cyclone FPGA family...
... if any other vendor provides an FPGA with the same pin count and price under $10...

Welcome to the FPGA price curve, where more pins, and more logic (surprise) costs more.
If you really need those 343 io's and the 15408 Cells, then do not expect a very low price.

eg Lattice have LCMXO3L parts with slightly more IO, but less Logic, and they have LFE5U series that start with quite good $/logic values, but the lowest cost (sub $10) ones do not have 343 io