Not sure where to post this, but we are getting quite frustrated. We do moderate (5-20k/year) volumes of C4 and C5 parts. 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.
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.
