Lattice MachXO2/XO3/XO3D vs ECP5

[Brane2]

Can anyone shed some light on why are XO2/3 chips so expenisive compared to ECP5 ?

XO2/3 is supposed to be middle-to-low end of their product lines, but simple
6900 LUT XO3 is significantly more expensive than 12kLUT ECP5.

What gives ?

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 7:20:16 AM UTC-5, Brane2 wrote:

Can anyone shed some light on why are XO2/3 chips so expenisive compared to ECP5 ?

XO2/3 is supposed to be middle-to-low end of their product lines, but simple
6900 LUT XO3 is significantly more expensive than 12kLUT ECP5.

What gives ?

ECP5 is a RAM based family much like the Xilinx parts.

The XO, XO2, XO3, XP2 device families are all flash based. I don't know the details of how their fabrication is different from the RAM based ECP families, but the flash does take up die space if nothing else. I'm sure the flash capabilities aren't available on the smallest feature size processes.

Lattice also makes the Silicon Blue derived iCE40 families which are non-volatile as in one time writable ROM based.

--

Rick C.

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[Brane2]

XO families only contain FLASH, they are not flash absed AFAIK.

That is, during the initialisation FLASH still gets internally copied to SRAM.

If the FLASH onboard is the reason for the price, why is 7kLUT XO2 or XO3 so much more expensive than 12kLUT ECP + much bigger SPI FLASH ?

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 1:17:37 AM UTC-5, Brane2 wrote:

XO families only contain FLASH, they are not flash absed AFAIK.

That is, during the initialisation FLASH still gets internally copied to SRAM.

Yes, but it is very fast, less than a ms in the XP part I use.


> If the FLASH onboard is the reason for the price, why is 7kLUT XO2 or XO3 so much more expensive than 12kLUT ECP + much bigger SPI FLASH ?

Without the flash the entire chip can be made on a smaller geometry and so, much smaller and cheaper. That is what Xilinx was saying in this forum many years ago as the basis for saying flash FPGA can't compete. Yes, flash FPGA can't compete at the high end. But there is still a market for flash based devices in the low end.

I've always preferred the flash parts because of the simplicity of use and field programming. My real issue with the SRAM based part though is usually the packaging. Along with not being low end oriented the other makers like the high pin count packages that are harder to use.

--

Rick C.

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