Get ready to wave a fond farewell to Spartan and Virtex FPGAs from Xilinx

Written by Clive Maxfield February 22, 2010 Hits: 525 Favorites

2.5 (2)

That got your attention didn’t it? Of course Xilinx aren’t going to stop making FPGAs, but they are going to stop having two product lines ... in the future there will be a single family called...

... well, that's the point of this blog ... what will they be called?

As you are doubtless aware, Xilinx currently field two major FPGA families: Spartan devices are billed as "lowest cost, lowest power", while their big-brother Virtex devices are billed as "lowest-power, high performance".

The drip-drip-drip sound you hear is my brain working furiously

There have been several generations of the Spartan and Virtex families. We are currently working with Sparten-6 and Virtex-6 components. But today's announcement of forthcoming 28 nm FPGAs is going to change all of this.

Of course there are advantages to having two product lines – not the least that you can position one as being a more affordable offering while the other is targeted at those who need the best of the best with cost being less of an issue. But there are disadvantages also – consider IP, for example; it's a pain in the rear end having to maintain multiple instantiations of each IP block.

So it really does make sense for Xilinx to go forwards with a single family of devices that span the whole range, from smaller more affordable members of the family to the ultra-devices whose capacity and performance specifications make your eyes water.

But what will Xilinx call this new family? I suppose they could simply call it Virtex-7, but that denies the Spartan line from its place in history. How about a munged-together name like Virtan? Or Spartex? Or Spandex? (No, that would be silly).

Hmmm... I shall have to mull on this. Do you have any ideas? You never know, if we come up with something really cool, the folks at Xilinx might use it...

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Overall:

2.5

Why two families make sense (or should that be cents?)

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2.0

Reviewed by Paul Dillien
February 25, 2010

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For years both Xilinx and Altera have marketed two distinct product families to serve the different needs of customers. The flagship Virtex products are positioned as the fastest with all the latest features, while the Spartan products serve less demanding cost conscious applications. Makes sense.

Then look at the price for 1000 logic elements in each family and you find a massive disparity. Distributor web sites show that the Virtex-6 parts are priced at around $10 per 1k logic elements and the Spartan-6 at below $1.50. So for the added speed and features customers pay around 6X. Xilinx earn around 60% of their revenue from Virtex families and 25% from Spartan. It would be commercial suicide to combine them.

(The above points are discussed more fully in the FPGA Market Report that I have just released. Anyone wanting to find out more can visit: www.high-tech-marketing.co.uk/FPGA )

Yup, got my attention....

Overall:

3.0

Reviewed by Bruce Fienberg
February 22, 2010

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...but my lips are sealed. Stay tuned.

- Bruce

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Clive Maxfield