Spartan-3E starter kit
in [FPGA]
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From: Mike Harrison on 2 Nov 2005 18:09 On 2 Nov 2005 14:20:17 -0800, "Peter Alfke" <peter(a)xilinx.com> wrote: >I promised an answer. The digging took a bit longer... > >The good news is that Xilinx has many thousands of S3e100 in TQ144, and >hundreds in vq100 packages, as well as many S3500 in several packages. >The bad new is that -today- these parts are still ES ("early silicon") >which distribution hates to touch, because the parts will become >obsolete very soon, once the production version becomes available. So why not put them in the web store....
From: Pratip Mukherjee on 2 Nov 2005 18:26 "Peter Alfke" <peter(a)xilinx.com> wrote in news:1130970017.548080.12630 @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com: > I promised an answer. The digging took a bit longer... > > The good news is that Xilinx has many thousands of S3e100 in TQ144, and > hundreds in vq100 packages, as well as many S3500 in several packages. > The bad new is that -today- these parts are still ES ("early silicon") > which distribution hates to touch, because the parts will become > obsolete very soon, once the production version becomes available. > > If you need them immediately, order them through your distributor or > your Xilinx sales folks. And realize that "6 to 8 weeks" is often > exaggerated. > > Production S3e100 and 500s are expected this month, and 1600 soon > after. And the distis will love to sell them (which they consider their > job, even in Europe !). > > I have held the almost final version of the S3e500-based evaluation > board in my hand. It is dynamite, loaded with features and peripherl > circuits, compatible with a slew of inexpensive Digilent add-on boards. > Availability starts in December. Well before that, there will be a > business-card-size eval board, packaged in a DVD-case, meant as a > super-low-cost S3e100 demonstrator. > > Spartan3e is really rolling, and will soon be a big success. Too bad > that Marketing created expectations that were impossible to meet. > Keep the faith, Spartan3e is real, and it is coming! > Peter Alfke, Xilinx > Can't wait for December to come! Can I book my order from now? -Pratip
From: Brian Davis on 2 Nov 2005 21:03 Peter wrote: > I have held the almost final version of the S3e500-based evaluation > board in my hand. Any chance of releasing the user manual before the boards show up? > It is dynamite, loaded with features and peripherl circuits, > compatible with a slew of inexpensive Digilent add-on boards. Does that mean Xilinx stuck with the (hopelessly outdated) 40 pins, one ground (Note 1) I/O connector pinout of the older Digilent boards? Cheap evaluation boards are great resources, but continuing to design and ship evaluation boards for sub-ns edge rate CMOS parts with such a poorly grounded I/O header is just plain silly. Is there a decent high speed I/O connector provided? ( Doesn't even have to be anything fancier than a dual row 0.1" header, just ground one row of the connector, and properly route some diff pairs out ) or, as I suggested when the S3 board came out: > > The pinout probably was picked to match that of the the older >Digilent boards; however, it looks like there's enough room on the >layout to add a third row of ground pins so the end user could snip >off the pre-stuffed two row headers and use a three row header instead. > > An I/O connector with diff. pair routing and provision for VRP/VRN >resistors and VREF bank pins would also be handy. > Brian (Note 1) and for anyone counting VCC pins as returns, the S3 eval kit has one plane VCC pin, no bypass caps nearby, with IO connector traces merrily crossing VCC plane cuts
From: GPE on 2 Nov 2005 22:06 "Mike Harrison" <mike(a)whitewing.co.uk> wrote in message news:0uhim1pm7fn218r7fctq34a0qtaftfthr3(a)4ax.com... > On 2 Nov 2005 14:20:17 -0800, "Peter Alfke" <peter(a)xilinx.com> wrote: > >>I promised an answer. The digging took a bit longer... >> >>The good news is that Xilinx has many thousands of S3e100 in TQ144, and >>hundreds in vq100 packages, as well as many S3500 in several packages. >>The bad new is that -today- these parts are still ES ("early silicon") >>which distribution hates to touch, because the parts will become >>obsolete very soon, once the production version becomes available. > > So why not put them in the web store.... Yeah! You'd think ES parts would be prime candidates for the web store. -- Ed
From: Peter Alfke on 3 Nov 2005 13:16
Brian, your older comments must have fallen on good ears. The S3e500-based evaluation board uses a two-row 100-pin connector with (almost) one whole row dedicated to Ground. Plus two legacy connectors that are much smaller. 2 x 16 character LCD display, rotary shaft encoder input, USB connector, plus other goodies... The manual is still being written, and I offered some help. December is the month... Peter Alfke, Xilinx |