Author Topic: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??  (Read 10373 times)

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Offline NorthGuy

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #50 on: June 24, 2022, 08:30:23 pm »
That's only part of the problem. Another part is - will this increased demand remain in the future to justify these huge investment into expanded production capacity? We're talking about billions of $$$, not many are willing to risk such investments without having some certainty as to getting a return on them. With so much uncertainty, it's hard to predict which way things will go, as there are plenty of agruments both ways. Which is why I suspect more vendors will just try to ride out the storm, hoping to make it to the other side, and we would serve ourselves best to adapt to a current reality. This is hard, and I for one lost a few prospects just because I wasn't able to secure supply of parts they required in the timeframe they had allocated, which of course sucks, but it is what it is, and complaining about it on forums doesn't really help anything.

The market is supposed to take care of this. The prices should have gone up, giving TSMC and other companies bigger profit margin thereby attracting more investment. Instead, listed prices inceased by very little (say XC7A15T was $28, now it is $33), Xilinx behaves like nothing has changed, but the free market is completely destroyed. The only way to adapt to this is to abandon Xilinx completely.

I still have some parts left, I could've built boards and done prototyping work, but I don't want to waste my time if they're not going to be available in the future.

Discussing this on the forums certainly won't improve the situation, but may help to understand things better and make more informed decisions ...  Probably not :(
« Last Edit: June 24, 2022, 08:46:56 pm by NorthGuy »
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #51 on: June 25, 2022, 12:23:54 am »
Yep. That's exactly what I meant by "The production capacity that would be required right now to meet demand might not be required anymore a few years from now, and those are massive investments."
=)
Yea, which is why complaining about it doesn't really serve anything, we just have to learn to deal with it, hoping that situation will eventually improve.
Still, the question is whether Altera and Xilinx remain the go-to brands for people using FPGAs. I have already put a Gowin device in one design and see myself replacing another Xilinx FPGA with one from Gowin. These designs are simply lost for Xilinx and I'm not the only one. This begs the question how much market share will Xilinx be left with once they can ramp up production? Will it even be worthwhile for them to keep producing low cost FPGAs?
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Offline dmendesf

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #52 on: June 25, 2022, 02:58:02 pm »
Probably Intel & AMD will eat the brains of Altera and Xilinx and spin off the lower end devices as other companies. They don't want to mess with that, only with the cool IA  and datacenter stuff.
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #53 on: June 25, 2022, 04:19:38 pm »
AFAIK, those are Artix UltraScale+. https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/fpga/artix-ultrascale-plus.html
(Not exactly what I would call lower-end FPGAs, but everyone's perspective is different.)
Yep, but that was just an example, as these are the parts I'm personally interested in.

I know FPGA makers always want to push their latest and greatest while not so much the families that were the latest and greatest just yesterday.  Still, this looks like possibly the lowest cost Xilinx part I can use on my product, XC7S6-1FTGB196C.  1 mm ball pitch, 15x15 mm package.  This should be routable with relaxed layout rules.  Of course, you can't buy any, but the price, if you could buy them, looks to be under $10.  So it fits my board in every way.  It's been a while since I've used Xilinx tools though.  I'd rather use a Lattice part.  I don't see where they've brought out anything interesting in a while.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #54 on: June 25, 2022, 04:32:03 pm »
The market is supposed to take care of this. The prices should have gone up, giving TSMC and other companies bigger profit margin thereby attracting more investment. Instead, listed prices inceased by very little (say XC7A15T was $28, now it is $33), Xilinx behaves like nothing has changed, but the free market is completely destroyed. The only way to adapt to this is to abandon Xilinx completely.

I still have some parts left, I could've built boards and done prototyping work, but I don't want to waste my time if they're not going to be available in the future.

Discussing this on the forums certainly won't improve the situation, but may help to understand things better and make more informed decisions ...  Probably not :(

So, if you abandon Xilinx, to where do you turn? 
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #55 on: June 25, 2022, 04:38:57 pm »
Still, the question is whether Altera and Xilinx remain the go-to brands for people using FPGAs. I have already put a Gowin device in one design and see myself replacing another Xilinx FPGA with one from Gowin. These designs are simply lost for Xilinx and I'm not the only one. This begs the question how much market share will Xilinx be left with once they can ramp up production? Will it even be worthwhile for them to keep producing low cost FPGAs?

You make it sound like these companies are not able to sell product.  They are selling everything they make.  Just as Tesla dropped the lower cost versions of their cars, bringing up the average selling price, it would not surprise me if the FPGA companies do the same.  If there are ICs they can't make due to production limitations, they are going to set aside the lower profit devices as much as they can.  But they still have to meet obligations to high volume customers.  I guarantee they are getting what they need first. 

BTW, you are aware that Xilinx doesn't own foundries, right?  Or did that change over the last few years?  I know AMD surprised the heck out of me when they sold off their foundries.  It was a brilliant move and is paying off in spades!
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #56 on: June 25, 2022, 04:41:23 pm »
Probably Intel & AMD will eat the brains of Altera and Xilinx and spin off the lower end devices as other companies. They don't want to mess with that, only with the cool IA  and datacenter stuff.

I don't think it is that simple.  The lower cost devices have lower prices, but much larger volumes.  In the auto industry, no one wants to sell low end cars.  But they all do, and cry about the low profit margins all the way to the bank.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #57 on: June 25, 2022, 06:25:31 pm »
Still, the question is whether Altera and Xilinx remain the go-to brands for people using FPGAs. I have already put a Gowin device in one design and see myself replacing another Xilinx FPGA with one from Gowin. These designs are simply lost for Xilinx and I'm not the only one. This begs the question how much market share will Xilinx be left with once they can ramp up production? Will it even be worthwhile for them to keep producing low cost FPGAs?

You make it sound like these companies are not able to sell product.  They are selling everything they make.
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2022, 06:32:51 pm by nctnico »
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Online asmi

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #58 on: June 25, 2022, 08:04:54 pm »
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.
Surely they are. There are already products using their newest devices, so they must've came from somewhere. Like I said above, new AU10/15P are now in full production and available for ordering. One only needs to take a look at their financial documents to see that they are full steam ahead with manufacturing and shipping. The fact that YOU can't get them doesn't mean nobody can. From what I've heard, the lead time for their devices is now about a year, which is not a problem for commercial designs as the R&D cycle is typically at least that long, and I haven't heard that anyone was bumped off their order with Xilinx yet, regardless of the volume. It is a problem for smaller shops with shorter R&D cycles, because it forces them to buy devices in advance, and also leads to often using larger device that is strictly neccessary because that's what they stocked - being unable to source smaller devices with short lead times (read as "buy them on DK/Mouser at the last minute"), which of course cuts into profit margin and makes products more expensive then they could be in a more "normal" market. For example, I've stocked up with Artix-100T devices in 676 package because resource-wise (number of IO, LUT/FF, BRAM, DSP, MGTs) they cover anything that I've ever designed (except for one design where I used K325T device), but it's obvoisly not cheap, and in most production boards I would've used smaller devices if I would have them on hand. Which is why I'm interested in AU10/15P and thinking about placing an order - they are about 2-2.5 times faster than A100T while costing about the same, and it looks like the lead time for them is shorter than usual.

Online asmi

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #59 on: June 25, 2022, 08:06:48 pm »
I did a while ago, but received no response. Apparently, a single tray is not the quantity which is worth responding for them.
Did you send an email from "free" providers (gmail, hotmail et al)? If so, they probably didn't receive it as they have rather aggressive spam filter. I highly recommend using corporate email address to contact them.

Offline nctnico

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #60 on: June 25, 2022, 08:09:19 pm »
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.
Surely they are. There are already products using their newest devices, so they must've came from somewhere. Like I said above, new AU10/15P are now in full production and available for ordering. One only needs to take a look at their financial documents to see that they are full steam ahead with manufacturing and shipping. The fact that YOU can't get them doesn't mean nobody can. From what I've heard, the lead time for their devices is now about a year, which is not a problem for commercial designs as the R&D cycle is typically at least that long,
Well, re-ordering for a new batch of units is a problem when production takes a year instead of months. One of my customers is basically dead in the water because of it. Before that getting boards produced wasn't a problem at all (no, not ordering from Mouser / Digikey; getting project specific pricing from Xilinx well under Mouser / Digikey prices). A re-design without Xilinx is nearby. Something is 'wrong' (=not normal) with Xilinx' production and you more or less admit it by having hoarded components yourself. Good for Xilinx if they decided to focus on new components but it seems designs that use older components are dead in the water.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2022, 08:30:54 pm by nctnico »
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Offline ejeffrey

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #61 on: June 25, 2022, 11:53:29 pm »
The point is that xilinx is making and selling a lot of chips, and many people are buying and using them.  It's not that there is no problem, and it hits low volume customers the most, but what you are saying is the equivalent of "nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's too crowded"
 

Offline cortex_m0

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #62 on: June 26, 2022, 08:27:52 pm »
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.

Xilinx is a fabless company. Has been for many years. As such, they do not have a "full production capacity" - their capacity is whatever TSMC or Samsung or whoever says they can have. All indications are that the foundries are running at full capacity.

It would not be surprising at all if Xilinx went to their foundry partner for the 7-Series to buy more capacity and were told the capacity they requested was not available.
 

Offline NorthGuy

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #63 on: June 26, 2022, 08:32:43 pm »
The point is that xilinx is making and selling a lot of chips, and many people are buying and using them.  It's not that there is no problem, and it hits low volume customers the most, but what you are saying is the equivalent of "nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's too crowded"

Xilinx are not making anything. They outsource production. As they're a part of AMD now, I'm sure AMD CPUs take precedence over "cost-effective" FPGA.

If you look at financials for silicon companies then you can see that the increase in revenue is modest and is mostly due to higher margins (as manifested by higher growth in profits compare to revenue), and increased cost of production. Thus there's no increase in the amount of chips they produce, the production may even have decreased. Thus the restaurant isn't too "crowded", it is rather becoming "private", unavailable to general public.

So, if you abandon Xilinx, to where do you turn? 

I don't know yet.

Did you send an email from "free" providers (gmail, hotmail et al)? If so, they probably didn't receive it as they have rather aggressive spam filter. I highly recommend using corporate email address to contact them.

I use business email everywhere. I usually fill in the sales contact form on the Web when I want to contact sales. This shouldn't go through the spam filter.

 

Offline nctnico

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #64 on: June 26, 2022, 08:49:36 pm »
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.

Xilinx is a fabless company. Has been for many years. As such, they do not have a "full production capacity" - their capacity is whatever TSMC or Samsung or whoever says they can have. All indications are that the foundries are running at full capacity.
That is why I wrote 'skipped a few slots'. Foundries likely have some slot allocation for their customers. If a customer cancels a slot, then the foundry will fill that slot with producing something else (if they can) and the original customer has to queue at the end of the line if they want to request new slot allocations.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline cortex_m0

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #65 on: June 26, 2022, 08:57:37 pm »
As they're a part of AMD now, I'm sure AMD CPUs take precedence over "cost-effective" FPGA.

I doubt there is anything AMD still makes that competes with the 6- and 7- series Xilinx parts for fab time. Maybe some of the UltraScale and UltraScale+ FPGAs, but that's definitely not a low end FPGA.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #66 on: June 26, 2022, 09:04:35 pm »
As they're a part of AMD now, I'm sure AMD CPUs take precedence over "cost-effective" FPGA.

I doubt there is anything AMD still makes that competes with the 6- and 7- series Xilinx parts for fab time. Maybe some of the UltraScale and UltraScale+ FPGAs, but that's definitely not a low end FPGA.

That's a fair point. The process nodes are definitely not the same.
 

Offline NorthGuy

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #67 on: June 26, 2022, 09:36:48 pm »
I doubt there is anything AMD still makes that competes with the 6- and 7- series Xilinx parts for fab time. Maybe some of the UltraScale and UltraScale+ FPGAs, but that's definitely not a low end FPGA.

It depends on what they compete for. As I understand, there are shortages of many raw materials which may be needed for wide variety of processes.

If the shortages were process-specific, they wouldn't be as severe as they are.
 

Offline ejeffrey

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #68 on: June 26, 2022, 09:42:09 pm »
Xilinx are not making anything. They outsource production. As they're a part of AMD now, I'm sure AMD CPUs take precedence over "cost-effective" FPGA.

There is no competition for fab space between those.  Ultrascale+ uses TSMC 16FF.  Lower cost FPGAs use older processes.  AMDs old zen1 CPUs use GF 14 nm finfets. Zen 2 uses 7 nm with a 12 nm IO die.  There is no overlap between high performance CPUs and GPUs with FPGAs except for Intel AgileX devices which use intel's cursed 10 nm process.

As I understand the thing that is competing with FPGAs is high speed networking and IO.  Analog and IO performance doesn't improve much or even gets worse with smaller feature sizes, so a lot of those chips stick with nodes in the 28 nm range -- used by xilinx in their 7 series.  So I think it is switches and routers going into massive cloud data centers and 5G network deployments that are taking up all the capacity that could be used for FPGAs not CPUs and GPUs.
 

Offline miken

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #69 on: June 27, 2022, 04:00:55 am »
Xilinx is an investor in Efinix, so presumably they intend to cede the low end as time goes by.
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #70 on: June 27, 2022, 04:13:54 am »
Still, the question is whether Altera and Xilinx remain the go-to brands for people using FPGAs. I have already put a Gowin device in one design and see myself replacing another Xilinx FPGA with one from Gowin. These designs are simply lost for Xilinx and I'm not the only one. This begs the question how much market share will Xilinx be left with once they can ramp up production? Will it even be worthwhile for them to keep producing low cost FPGAs?

You make it sound like these companies are not able to sell product.  They are selling everything they make.
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.

That last bit is unclear.  Are you saying, "nothing is available" which makes you think Xilinx has halted production???  Or there is no news available that would make you think think Xilinx might have halted production? 

Why would you think they've stopped production?
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #71 on: June 27, 2022, 04:16:54 am »
Well, re-ordering for a new batch of units is a problem when production takes a year instead of months. One of my customers is basically dead in the water because of it. Before that getting boards produced wasn't a problem at all (no, not ordering from Mouser / Digikey; getting project specific pricing from Xilinx well under Mouser / Digikey prices). A re-design without Xilinx is nearby. Something is 'wrong' (=not normal) with Xilinx' production and you more or less admit it by having hoarded components yourself. Good for Xilinx if they decided to focus on new components but it seems designs that use older components are dead in the water.

Focusing on new products does not mean abandoning old ones, unless possibly the new parts are in full production, which from this conversation sounds to me like they are not.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #72 on: June 27, 2022, 04:20:19 am »
The question is: have they been running at full production capacity? And I mean not just now, but all through the last 2 years. If -for example- they skipped a few slots due to cancelled orders, they'll have a huge backlog to catch up. Even if they skipped only a few slots. Nothing is available from Xilinx which makes me believe they have halted production for a while.

Xilinx is a fabless company. Has been for many years. As such, they do not have a "full production capacity" - their capacity is whatever TSMC or Samsung or whoever says they can have. All indications are that the foundries are running at full capacity.

It would not be surprising at all if Xilinx went to their foundry partner for the 7-Series to buy more capacity and were told the capacity they requested was not available.

Yeah, right.  I think they get a better reception than that.  Also, I don't think they wake up one morning and decide to place an order for a million parts of a new product line.  Every step of the way, they are coordinating with the foundry.  So if they have a new line of parts to work into a production schedule, they may not get as many as they want, but they will be worked in as much as possible.
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Offline jayk

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #73 on: June 27, 2022, 04:42:54 am »
The Artix US+ do look interesting, and I agree they may actually be more available simply because they're new and not in as much demand. 

Do you know if they're supported by Vivado Standard?  This makes it look like only the largest AU25P is supported by the free verison: https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/vivado-ml.html#architecture.
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: where did all the lower end FPGAs go ??
« Reply #74 on: June 27, 2022, 05:13:03 am »
Anyone heard of Cologne Chip?  They are German and seem to have out the smallest part in their product line, 20kLUTs.  The LUT structure is a bit unique, with 8 inputs to a "LUT-tree" which can be configured as a pair of 4LUTs or something else I haven't found yet.  Only a single package, 324 pin, 0.8 mm BGA. 

The most interesting part is Digikey has them in stock!
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