For those of CASPERites, especially those in the US, looking to purchase FPGAs, you might share my frustration that the price quoted by the Xilinx franchised distributors in the US (Avnet and Digikey) doesn’t seem to decay with time or quantity, nor it is easy in my experience to negotiate better pricing.
With some trepidation around August last year we purchased a dozen V6-SX475T in -2 speed grade from a non-franchised distributer, to which I think I was referred by the Octopart website. They quoted attractive pricing for -2 parts (quite a bit less than the franchised price for -1) and a long lead time (22 weeks). I did some due diligence checking a few references etc, and bit the bullet. They substantially beat the lead time delivering in about 3 weeks, and now that the parts are assembled onto ROACH2s as best we can tell they are functional. So with the caveat that your mileage may vary here is a suggested vendor to consider: EarthTron, LLC 210 West Road, Unit 6 Portsmouth, NH 03801 Toll-free: 800-322-2130 Jason Miles Senior OEM Sales main 603-433-2007 Ext 126 direct 603-766-6310 fax 603-433-2007 email jason.mi...@earthtron.com google talk jason.mi...@earthtron.com Jason says the parts the supplied were sourced from Xilinx, exactly the meaning of the term “franchised distributer” is, and the pricing policy remains a bit of a mystery to me. Cheers, Jonathan
