AMD Discontinues Selection of Old Xilinx CPLD & FPGA Models

[T0@st]

AMD has quietly issued a product discontinuation notice—their PDF document is dated January 1 2024—for a whole bunch of Xilinx Complex Programmable Logic Device (CLPD) and lower-end FPGA models. Team Red's opening statement on the matter reads: "AMD will be discontinuing XC9500XL, CoolRunner XPLA 3, CoolRunner II, Spartan II, and Spartan 3, 3A, 3AN, 3E, 3ADSP Commercial/ Industrial "XC" and Automotive "XA" Product Families due to declining run-rate and supplier sustainability reasons." The American multinational semiconductor inherited a large back catalog of programmable logic products once their acquisition of Xilinx was completed back in 2022.

Industry analysts believed that this takeover was mainly motivated by a desire to expand into FPGA territories, although Team Red indicated that it would carry on producing and supporting Xilinx's older CLPD products—for example, the Spartan 3 family debuted back in 2011, while a couple of the CoolRunner II parts on the list are of 2002 vintage. AMD's discontinuation notice provides details of Last Time Buy (LTB) final orders—the cut-off date for soon-to-be-axed devices appears to be June 29 2024.



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[trsttte]

Sad news, some of those like the Spartan 2 and 3 are used in universities all around the world because they're "cheap" entry points to start learning and working on fpga's. There's other options nowadays but AMD will loose out on having a lot engineers learning on their tools from the start.

 

[Scrizz]

Sad news, some of those like the Spartan 2 and 3 are used in universities all around the world because they're "cheap" entry points to start learning and working on fpga's. There's other options nowadays but AMD will loose out on having a lot engineers learning on their tools from the start.

yep, time to go back to Alterra

 

[dragontamer5788]

Sad news, some of those like the Spartan 2 and 3 are used in universities all around the world because they're "cheap" entry points to start learning and working on fpga's. There's other options nowadays but AMD will loose out on having a lot engineers learning on their tools from the start.

Am I missing something here?

Spartan 3 is old... really, really, really old.

Go get yourself a modern Spartan 7: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/digilent-inc/410-376/9445911

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Though most people probably want the Zynq these days: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/digilent-inc/410-370/9445909 . FPGA + ARM combo-chip just makes more sense in more cases. (No "softcore" is anywhere near as good as a hardcore ARM... and yes that's the proper terminology here and I'm not just making shit up...)

 

[KLMR]

Sad news, some of those like the Spartan 2 and 3 are used in universities all around the world because they're "cheap" entry points to start learning and working on fpga's. There's other options nowadays but AMD will loose out on having a lot engineers learning on their tools from the start.

This. Spartan 3 has been the entry point for so many students to FPGA programming. Still works and works as intended.
Zynq are SoC with a very "bad" segmentation strategy and adds complexity when no needed, you only have to take a look at the ones inside dpsaces.

 

[trsttte]

Am I missing something here?

Spartan 3 is old... really, really, really old.

Go get yourself a modern Spartan 7: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/digilent-inc/410-376/9445911

---------

Though most people probably want the Zynq these days: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/digilent-inc/410-370/9445909 . FPGA + ARM combo-chip just makes more sense in more cases. (No "softcore" is anywhere near as good as a hardcore ARM... and yes that's the proper terminology here and I'm not just making shit up...)

I know it's old, but it's still the bread and butter around a lot of universities. I didn't know about that 7 model but seems like a nice alternative so not much lost if tools are kept available for a while until things are replaced.