Unplanned component end-of-life and other supply discontinuities can suck the profit out of otherwise successful products. Intel is laser focused on delivering the most stable, reliable, and resilient supply chain possible for its FPGA customers
There’s nothing worse than working hard to design and manufacture a product, laboring to build customer demand, and seeing sales take off, only to be stopped dead in your tracks when a supplier suddenly and unexpectedly cancels availability of a critical component like an FPGA.
That’s why supply resilience is a strategic focus area for Intel’s Programmable Solution Group, the home of Intel® FPGAs. We have taken explicit actions to strengthen our supply chain for greater supply predictability, agility, and longevity, and ultimately to deliver a robust supply chain that our customers can trust.
Figure 1. Intel’s strategy for delivering a resilient supply chain for FPGA devices includes focused investment and a resilient, broad portfolio to enable predictable lead-time guidance, agile prototyping, supply longevity, and diverse manufacturing.
Our supply chain strategy incorporates multiple elements, including:
- Focused Investment — Intel’s Programmable Solutions (FPGA) Group is investing to increase manufacturing capacity across the end-to-end supply chain, covering wafer fabrication, substrate manufacturing, assembly, and testing capacity. We are increasing supply redundancy by expanding our multi-source capabilities, such as qualifying new substrate suppliers as alternative sources and bringing up new manufacturing, assembly, and test lines at existing suppliers. We are also investing in our inventory strategy to offer predictable, competitive lead-time guidance and to increase agility to handle demand growth and volatility. This includes offering 12-to-16-week lead-time guidance as standard for most device families used in new designs, and extremely fast—6-week or better—lead-time guidance for select devices used in prototyping.
- Building a Resilient Portfolio — We work to deliver a broad, resilient portfolio that takes into account supply chain robustness along with performance, features, and other critical product characteristics. We work closely with our wafer, substrate, and assembly and test partners to jointly maximize supply continuity and leadership capabilities for our shared customers.
- Commitment to Product Longevity — We’re focused on providing supply longevity to match the long FPGA application life cycles with device availability extending to at least 2035 for most product families. Some of our products, such as Intel® Cyclone® II and Intel® MAX® II introduced in 2004, will have been in production for over 30 years before reaching their planned end-of-life. Cyclone 10, MAX V and MAX 10 offering newer features are good options for new applications or designs, and as alternatives to products from other vendors that have reached end-of-life. Extended product longevity mitigates the risk of obsolescence and minimizes the cost of redesigning, so customers can have peace of mind when designing with our products. The table below shows our life cycle commitment.
Table excludes products with integrated HBM memory.
The semiconductor supply chain experienced some painful shocks in the past few years. Intel is working and investing to make sure your FPGA supply chain is rock solid throughout the life of your most successful products.
Disclaimer: In the event of unforeseen supply disruption such as vendor discontinuance, change in government regulations or production tools obsolescence, Intel will inform its customers.
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