The differences between Spartan and Virtex families

[blue_phoenix]

Vitex or Spartan?

Hello,

I am having difficulty in comparing the differences between Spartan and Virtex Families. Could you please help me with the comparison of the two?
Which is better to use? which is more easy to manipulate (concerning the timing)?

Tnx in advance.

blue phoenix

 

[farhada]

Re: Vitex or Spartan?

Hi,
A quick answer is to check out the page at:

**broken link removed**

But in general, Virtex has more multipliers, more I/O, more BRAM and much more DCMs.

Virtex family also comes with integrated processor as well which Spartan does not.

Also, if you are planning to convert your FPGA to ASIC, forget about Spartan, they just don't support it.

Anything other than that, depends on your project, your budget, and you need to decide if you need as many DCMs (the most important for timing when you have many different clock sources/paths). BRAM and/or integrated processor or not.

IMHO, Spartan has everything you need for najority of projects, unless you are dealing with real time image processing or optical networking or ATM etc.

Just my 2c,
BR,
/Farhad

 

[Ruben G]

Virtex Devices are the high performance Xilinx FPGA
They are available for Compute Intensive, Logic Intensive and DSP Intensive designs Spartan Devices are basically derivatives of the Virtex devices were some of the speed and lots of the density has been traded off for cost. The cost difference is substantial in 2009 according Pryzbus, The Spartan-6 family is priced between $3 and $54 in high volume of 10,000 units, The Virtex-6 range is priced between $50 and $2,000, depending on FPGA logic capacity and volume. Unless you need the density and speed that the Virtex Devices can deliver you probably should be looking at the Spartan devices.