Problems with Intel FPGA Sales/Distribution

[mikechi2]

Hoping to get some advice from you guys

We do moderate (5-20k/year) volumes of C4 and C5 parts. We were lucky that we had restocked just at the start of the pandemic and made it through the shortages largely unscathed.

Given the situation over the past few years, we now want to take control of our supply chains rather than relying soley on our CM in China.
Contacted Intel: they told us they don't do direct sales, talk to Arrow Electronics. Great.

Reached out to Arrow. After almost 3 months, the best they can do for 5k+ quantities is something like $10 off a $300-$400+ part with a 2 year lead time.

In the meantime, my CM is able to source the parts we need at a somewhat more reasonable price (yes, I'm aware of the pricing games in the FPGA world and what the true price is with respect to the qty price) with a 12 week lead time. Looks like the shortage is over, thankfully!

So the takeaway is that Intel would rather support opaque overseas resellers and that their "official authorized" resellers are basically impossible to work with?
Frankly for a customer that requires zero support (our designs done and we've been using Altera parts for years) and basically want to just buy parts - the optics of this is quite insulting.

Does anyone have any suggestions? We would love to buy through legitmate channels.

In the meantime, whenever we need parts from every other major company, it's just a few clicks on the website instead of dicking around with middlemen.  🙄

[mon2]

Intel sucks gasses from dead bears. They are a dinosaur.

1) Design them out!! Try Efinix or Gowin (in this order).

2) Have chased similar dreams of purchasing and supporting their bloated technology for years with Thunderbolt controllers. Back when it was supposed to be optical, blah blah blah. The pig of a design then was released from a select few and we received access after many PPT documents. It was like our first job interview yet they OEM'd and supported one of our designs at the BIOS level. Others they hired Redhat to validate for Linux PnP support for sensitive (ie. government) accounts. All with passing colors. For this interest,  they wanted us to use an 'ODM' in the back streets of Tapei. Seriously? Why would we educate our competition? Much like their 'Arduino killer', Galileo, most of their technology is defunct.

It is really interesting that they have no issues with over staffing their sales crew to pester the customer with 'how many will you buy'?? If you do not know already, do check offshore for the same product. You are playing with serious qty and dollars. If in doubt, as you should be, use Escrow services to validate the source. Even better if you can use an ISO shop who can do the PCBA and kitting services for you.

2 year lead time is just bonkers. IMHO. Now that my BP is down a bit..which part(s) are you after? Can check with some of the brokers offshore. Also, are you 'locked in' with Arrow? That is another pet peeve, this basically means they receive the parts at a discount and at their mercy, they may or may not extend the discount to you as the customer. We have had cases where the disti just pocketed the difference. Screwed them in the end and went offshore for 1/5th cost for years.

[mikechi2]

Indeed, design them out moving forward and rely on the overseas distribution channels that your CM has access to. Kind of sucky to support those distributors as they were the same people scalping just a few months ago. Weird that Intel would make it so hard for actual end users to just buy parts. 

[KaneTW]

Same with AMD/Xilinx. Insane quotes barely under list price (and god forbid you want expedited samples -- Digikey is literally cheaper and faster).

[mon2]

Do what we have done...search out an Intel distributor near your CM. Do not tell your CM of the offers from Arrow. They brow beat the prices down. Insist they source from the approved channels.

PS: get a quote Macnica??

[mikechi2]

Thank

Do what we have done...search out an Intel distributor near your CM. Do not tell your CM of the offers from Arrow. They brow beat the prices down. Insist they source from the approved channels.

PS: get a quote Macnica??

Thanks for the lead will try Macnica

[AndyC_772]

I'd be interested to hear of any reputable source that can get Intel FPGAs on a mere 12 week lead time.

Every Cyclone IV has been out of stock since Covid. I've been using them for years and had to design them out in favour of Efinix.

The Trion series is cheaper for a given capacity, but not faster, which is quite odd given the massive time gap between the release dates of the two families. I still prefer the Cyclone parts technically, but since Intel completely abandoned distribution, I have no choice.

Also, Efinix support has been excellent, while Intel's support over the last few years has been... you can probably guess.

[mikechi2]

I'd be interested to hear of any reputable source that can get Intel FPGAs on a mere 12 week lead time.

Every Cyclone IV has been out of stock since Covid. I've been using them for years and had to design them out in favour of Efinix.

The Trion series is cheaper for a given capacity, but not faster, which is quite odd given the massive time gap between the release dates of the two families. I still prefer the Cyclone parts technically, but since Intel completely abandoned distribution, I have no choice.

Also, Efinix support has been excellent, while Intel's support over the last few years has been... you can probably guess.

I'm not sure where my CM is getting them, which is part of my frustration. So Intel can supply random resellers but not actual end users? 

The shortage has greatly unwinded. For example digikey has 1,000+ of this C4 in stock:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/intel/EP4CE6E22C8N/2288251

And yeah Efinix does seem quite nice and actually supportive, but their tools are meh and for my use case, too many pins have I/O limitations, unfortunately. And they don't make parts appropriate for our higher end models.

[mon2]

As Emril would say, make some new friends at Terasic (wink wink). When dealing locally, insist to Intel that they can keep their registration. It only belongs to those that support you. You can take it away from Arrow and grant it to another distributor. It is your choice.

[gnuarm]

I'd be interested to hear of any reputable source that can get Intel FPGAs on a mere 12 week lead time.

Every Cyclone IV has been out of stock since Covid. I've been using them for years and had to design them out in favour of Efinix.

The Trion series is cheaper for a given capacity, but not faster, which is quite odd given the massive time gap between the release dates of the two families. I still prefer the Cyclone parts technically, but since Intel completely abandoned distribution, I have no choice.

Also, Efinix support has been excellent, while Intel's support over the last few years has been... you can probably guess.

The parts I'm using from Efinix, have versions (speed grades) available in stock, qty in the tens of thousands, from Digikey.  Well, last time I looked.  I'm getting close to needing to order. 

I might have considered the QFP100 package, which is new to the Triton line, but they are still only talking about engineering samples, with delivery late in the year.   They have onesie-twosies in stock.