what's happended for spartan-III fpga for xilinx??

[speedoak]

Hi,guys:
I am working on a FPGA, and I use xc3s1500, but I heard that xilinx spartan-iii has some manufacture issue, and will delay the shipout date. anybody knows what happended??? it will skip my schedule

 

[davorin]

What I´ve heard from a Xilinx representative is that they had problems with some Virtex devices and pushed their production...therefore postponing Spartan III or making engineering samples with no RAM...

Also big issue is leakuage current in 90nm technology...

Haven´t checked lately since I switched over to Altera Cyclone...

 

[zape]

What I heard from Xilinx people is that foundries are working at 100% but Spartan III demand is even bigger.

 

[ramesh]

Some more news on FPGA Firm Errors which has to be considered for using FPGAs in Military and Space applications:

iRoC Technologies Report Demonstrates Neutrons Cause Ground-Level Failures in SRAM FPGAs, While Antifuse- and Flash-Based FPGAs are Immune to Neutron Bombardment.
For more info, visit the following page
**broken link removed**

 

[AMCC]

Hi,
One of the problems is that Xilinx had an 'Alfa Particle' contamination issue in some bath of their VirtexII-pro. That must have affected their production. I think they are now catching-up... I was one of the 'luky winner' of some FPGAs that I could not use and had to exchange....

 

[k4iNz0w]

Interesting. Do you have more information about that alpha particle issue?

 

[AMCC]

Hi,

Just quoting...
"The contaminant is basically naturally occurring
lead, which has decay particles in the uranium sequence. There are six
decay products that emit an alpha, with half lives from 4.5 billion
years (uranium itself) to tens of hours (some of the polonium decay
products. No other emission causes any problem (only the alphas).

The rate of upset is one in every 88 days for a 2V6000, as measured in
my lab, on 100 devices that are being monitored now for more than
200,000 device hours. The alphas in this sequence range from about 4
MeV, to about 8.5 MeV, and penetrate to the devices from the solder
bumps in the flip chip package. They can not be detected outside the
package, as they are absorbed by the various packaging materials, and do
not have enough energy to go all the way through the silicon die itself."


You can also find an document on xilinx regarding the subject (sorry, but I could't find it on my computer....)

AMCC