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Hi,
Hot socketting means that chip have very good latchup protection. It means that every chip pin can survive large (100mA and more) latchup currents.
I didn't find any hot socket declaration for Xilinx devices but they declare latchup currents 300mA for FPGA devices and 200mA for EPLD devices.
Another problem with hot socketting is what will happen with power-on reset, register states and configuration SRAM after plugging. I think that you can fast plug device but after that you need to manual reset device or switch on/off power. So in this case hot socketting is not so significant advantage.
Regards