FPGA Inventories/Leadtime

[Kwag]

Does anyone have any insight to what is going on with FPGA inventories. Do you have to be a select Intel partner to get parts? Standard distribution (Digikey) has nothing. When we ask leadtime the answer is on select customers are getting parts and they don't know the real leadtime. I hope an Intel FPGA person can help here. 

Here is a snap shot from digikey on Intel FPGA just checking stock and active parts

[raviganesh]

I think Intel FPGA is a sinking ship and is trying to take us all with it.

Effinix is a viable alternate to switch too. Coming from AHDL background I had great difficulty in switching to an event based (always @) language like Verilog or VHDL.

But I am not alone.  Charles Papon faced the same difficulty as me and was so annoyed that he went ahead to develope SpinalHDL I feel SpinalHDL is very easy to switch to from AHDL. Also moving away from the 100s of LPM blocks is no more frightening.

Here is a 5 minute video on getting the $35 Xyloni FPGA board of Effinix up and running. installation of Efinix software is a lot more easier than installing Nios EDS. Their tools are in developing stage but can readily be compensated by SpinalHDL.

Are you still waitig for the chips to arrive OR making the dive???

Getting Xyloni up in 5 minutes 

Ravi Ganesh

[raviganesh]

I was able to get 25 nos of 10CL006YU256C8G at $30/pcs.

It was at one time $230!

The black marketters are unable to hold stock.

Can Intel atleast be kind enought to inform a date when prodcution for Cyclone 10 will resume.

[raviganesh]

Thankyou CICCIO for exposing this.

I too placed an order with Mouser and this is the last reply I got from Mouser:

Dear sir,

We will check with the supplier and come back to you soon on this

Best Regards,

Mala.R

Customer Service Representative

Mouser Electronics India Pvt Ltd .- https://www.mouser.in/manufacturer/

(080) 42650000  Extn:4258

www.mouser.com

I feel very sad and sorry for Altera.

Your thoughts on how you are moving forward would be supportive.

Ravi Ganesh

[ak6dn]

Distributors can't sell parts they don't have in stock or can't get from the manufacturer.

Don't blame Mouser et al because they can't get parts for you.

High volume customers are buying up all the parts they can direct from Intel.

And it is not different sourcing parts from AMD/Xilinx.

High volume customers are buying up all the parts they can direct from Xilinx.

It is a semiconductor industry capacity problem.

Lots of these parts are all built at the same TSMC fabs, which is wafer thruput constrained.

Welcome to 2022. They say it will be be better by 2024.

[FPGA_Pete]

I would say all the major FPGA vendors are in the same boat.  They are all dependent upon a fab .

I know I'm seeing the same issues with Intel/Altera, AMD/Xilinx and Lattice.  So if you do switch to someone else, make sure you can actually get the parts, then buy them first before changing the board.  Otherwise they may not be available when you get the board done.

Even then, other components like voltage regulators and microprocessors are in short supply.  I've been seeing 2023 time frames for several of these items already as well.

Pete

[raviganesh]

This story has an happy ending. We migrated to Efinix and survived.

Charles Papon is my hero.

I am pleased to give back this small contribution to the open source community which helped me survive.

Efinix devices are the only readily available FPGA in market to the common engineer (June 2022)
As engineers migrate to Efinix from vendor dependent designs (like designs in AHDL, designs that use proprietary modules, proprietary SoC like Nios ) SpinalHDL and SaxonSoc is a God sent savior. A solid reference code in SpinalHDL is the need of the hour.

Please check out this reference design to kick start your migration for survival:

SaxonSoc/readme.md at dev-0.3 · surabibio/SaxonSoc (github.com)

Ravi Ganesh

[raviganesh]

Ciccio,

I would say better performance at lower price.

The Cyclone 10LP barely meets 960MBPS LVDS and I had to resort to all tricks to make it work.

With Titanium FPGA of Efinix (rated at 1.5GBPS LVDS) handling LVDS is a breeze. And it has on chip resistors and it has cleaned my layout like anything.

I feel sad about Altera, but there is a lot of catching up with competition for Intel.

Ravi

[ak6dn]

LOL look at the executive team at Efinix:  https://www.efinixinc.com/company-executive-leadership.html

From:  Altera/Cypress, Altera/Xilinx/Lattice, MicroSemi/Mitel, Altera/Micron, Altera, Marvell

One of the big investors is AMD/Xilinx

So your scorekeeping is flawed.

Efinix is in a good position now because they have no large customers soaking up all the parts that can be manufactured.

Appears they use TSMC as a fab based on their news feed.

And it looks like, based on jobs listings, Efinix does hardware design in Penang, Malaysia; and software in Toronto, Canada.

China is not mentioned except for a sales office in Hong Kong, and their use of TSMC as a fab in Taiwan.

[raviganesh]

This is what Efinix says:

Unlike traditional FPGAs, Efinix® FPGAs are manufactured on a standard CMOS silicon process - no special recipes or secret sauces. With a standard process, these FPGAs are easier for the fab to produce and they can optimize their production at volume. These production-quality FPGAs meet a sweet spot in the market with fewer production challenges than traditional devices.

---

What Intel lacks is competence, leave alone innovation.

Anyone installing  Nios II embedded design suite which is an essential part of Quartus will vouch this. 

2. Installation of Eclipse for EDS itself is a challenging task. You have to copy paste the plugin from Intel, then enable WSL from Micorsoft , then install Ubuntu from Windows Stores and then some ubuntu tools like "make" via "apt" from Ubuntu.

See how messed up it is.

Engineers that cannot make a proper installation disk cannot be expected to react to a complex problem such as the global semiconductor crisis.

Sorry Donald, you are now riding a terminally sick horse.

[Kwag]

So just an update. I found another authorized distributor who managed to get me some parts. It is Macnica America. They did a better job than any of your other distributors (knew who to speak too). No one from Intel ever got back to me. Kind of sad.

[raviganesh]

I am into design of my third non-Altera board with Titanium

Video of board in action 

If Intel had given a 100 chips I would not have gone away. I am a small customer, but I feel my contributions to competitor is a force multiplier for their growth.

Please hold your customers at least in future.