Lattice Avant E

[glenenglish]

Anyone got their hands on any new Avant E silicon yet

Datasheets currently have lots of white space, but ES parts have made it onto DK. It looks like a useful family, like Agilex 5,  broad range of agreeable features, nicely fractuable math block, serdes... decent speeds....

[SiliconWizard]

Nope. But this series will require a subscription for Radiant. (You'll probably get a limited license if you buy a dev board, which is Lattice's usual scheme.)

[glenenglish]

it has been indicated to me that they'll just give you the software forever if you buy a dev board, which is what most people would do if they're going to design with a > USD100 FPGA.....(my territory, mostly)

The factory rep also indicated to me 'the tools have been improved, significantly'. we'll see.
This probably relates to that Lattice is going into a world of 200k-600k LUT FPGAs which basic P&R tools will no longer cut it.

Dev boards with serdes ports on them available soon....

[SiliconWizard]

it has been indicated to me that they'll just give you the software forever if you buy a dev board, which is what most people would do if they're going to design with a > USD100 FPGA.....(my territory, mostly)

Yes, that's what I mentioned. The "forever", I was not sure about. But, even so, by "limited", it's my memory that the license they grant you with a dev board is valid only for the exact FPGA model that is on it, and no other in the same series. At least that's what it used to be with Versa boards. But you can check that with a rep.

[glenenglish]

You find that, in general, FPGA mfrs just put up lightwight roadblocks .   They dont seriously stop people from using their fpgas for the sake of some software cost or license if push comes to shove.
although they say so in their literature, sure. With a good relationship with the FAE, most things are possibe. THis is different of course to buying your fpgas from digikey, you are on your own.