By: who (who.else.delete@this.nobody.com), November 2, 2020 12:00 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on October 31, 2020 8:53 am wrote:
> Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on October 30, 2020 7:02 pm wrote:
> > On the other hand FPGAs are indeed uniquely suited to be an early product on a new process.
> > A state of the art ASIC/CPU/GPU/etc will require the process
> > to be well under control and for hundreds (thousands?)
> > of cell variants to be designed and carefully characterized before a chip goes into production.
> > Any safety margin will be locked in the design and to reap most of the benefits of better
> > process control or better characterization will require a respin of the chip.
> >
>
> I am not sure that it makes sense economically for FPGA company to become an early adapter of the
> new process. Very new chips are tiny part of the revenue, so why overpay for their production?
> It seems, typically FPGAs start to ship production parts on the process that is 1-1.5 years old.
> With likes of Apple overpaying for new stuff, may be, by now it should e closer to 2 years.
>
I wonder if some sizeable fraction of the NRE for taping out an FPGA design on a new process might be passed onto customers (TLAs? Emulator vendors?) who are desperate for more logic resources in the FPGAs they use, happy to ride the bleeding-edge to get them, and are willing to pay for the earliest access.
> Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on October 30, 2020 7:02 pm wrote:
> > On the other hand FPGAs are indeed uniquely suited to be an early product on a new process.
> > A state of the art ASIC/CPU/GPU/etc will require the process
> > to be well under control and for hundreds (thousands?)
> > of cell variants to be designed and carefully characterized before a chip goes into production.
> > Any safety margin will be locked in the design and to reap most of the benefits of better
> > process control or better characterization will require a respin of the chip.
> >
>
> I am not sure that it makes sense economically for FPGA company to become an early adapter of the
> new process. Very new chips are tiny part of the revenue, so why overpay for their production?
> It seems, typically FPGAs start to ship production parts on the process that is 1-1.5 years old.
> With likes of Apple overpaying for new stuff, may be, by now it should e closer to 2 years.
>
I wonder if some sizeable fraction of the NRE for taping out an FPGA design on a new process might be passed onto customers (TLAs? Emulator vendors?) who are desperate for more logic resources in the FPGAs they use, happy to ride the bleeding-edge to get them, and are willing to pay for the earliest access.
