Do Xilinx Fix Their Prices?

[Mike Treseler]

Andy Peters wrote:

It's great if you have
a relationship with a distributor, but once they find out that you
only want to build a handful of prototypes or whatever, they're not
interested. There has to be a way for the small garage shop guys to
get parts.

try this: http://www.arrow.com/
(o) Part Description
enter "acex" in the box
click (Search)

On page two there are qty=1 parts for under $20 you can order Online.
Ground shipping is $8

I have never used acex or online ordering,
but it looks like a viable option not requiring
any relationship with a distributor.

-- Mike Treseler

 

[Rick Collins]

Steve wrote:

Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<bvu1ml$7s71@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>...
Steve,

As for older parts, they do not get any less expensive to make. So the
price drops until the yields are stable, and then stops dropping.
Happens to everyone. At some point, they get more expensive to make as
their quantities go down, and the fab line equipment gets more expensive
to run (obsolete processes).

So why are the prices *identical* to the cent, at different suppliers,
in different countries, 4 years apart?

That is also why we then go to a new and less expensive technology as
soon as we can! If we can make an FPGA for less, our business increases
as the number of applications that can afford FPGAs increases.

As for why things cost less in quantity, that is Econ 101 (for non majors).

I must have missed Econ 101, so could you explain why there's such an
enormous difference in price between the following?:

From:

http://www.ebnonline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=4400089&_loopback=1

XC2S400E & XC2S600E for $27 and $45, respectively, in 250,000-unit
quantities, end 2002, and from:

http://www.plis.ru/price.html?ID=124

the cheapest you can get them for is $55.45 and $170.00 respectively,
for <100 units.

When we did accounts at uni we were taught that the larger the batch
size the cheaper the product is because you spread the manufacturing
setup charges across more units, but Xilinx aren't going to do a batch
size of 100 for an order or 100 units. Distribution costs can't be
much either because it only costs ~$9 to get a book sent to teh UK
from amazon.com. The cost of wages for sales people is a fixed cost
anyway, and the cost of the silicon itself is a variable cost which is
independent of the batch size if you take the manufacturing setup
costs separately.

So why are your small quantity prices so inflated?

Perhaps you should take an econ class, all kidding aside. I had a very
brief one in high school and the most basic concept (next to guns vs.
butter) is that of fixed costs vs. marginal costs. Even though they
don't *make* the parts in 100 unit lots, there are fixed costs
associated with selling them in 100 unit lots. This mainly has to do
with support, I would expect.

But there is also the issue of motivation. If you are running a company
that has customers buying literally millions of parts a year and
customers buying 100's of parts a year, are you going to give the small
customer anywhere near the same prices as the big customer? No, you are
going to shave every possible penny on the price you must to keep the
big customer from buying the competitor's parts. The 100 unit customer
is not even a consideration.

Besides, if you are buying only 100 of a part, is it a big issue if you
pay 2x for the part? If you are building a product, you are likely
selling the product for 3, 5 or even 10x your parts cost. Otherwise you
will be losing a little on each one you sell, and will be out of
business soon.


--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[Rick Collins]

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

Thomas Womack wrote:
In article <c00e21$77m1@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>,
Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote:

Steve,

Quite frankly, I am amazed at how folks think about this. You have
obviously never thought about that computer on your desk, and how it can
be sold for $499! Or even your car, just go price the parts
individually some time.


I've often priced the parts for building a computer, and they add up
to something within 15% of the price of buying the computer from Dell.
Moreover, the price for Intel CPUs in the shop is the same to within
about 15% as the price stated for thousand-unit quantities in their
press releases.

I believe FPGAs are comparably complicated to Intel CPUs, and I don't
think there's as much as an order of magnitude difference in production
quantity.

Is the market volatility for FPGAs that much greater?

An Intel cpu doesn't cost 4.70$ on whatever quantity.
And the margin on intel cpus is sufficient on all levels.

That is not the relevant point. FPGAs (which mostly cost much more than
$4.70) have a very different business model which requires significant
costs for each customer of the product. Support on FPGAs is very high.
There is also the cost of tool development which is nearly zero for the
CPU and very high recurring cost for FPGAs.

If you have any optimism about your business at all, it would be
best to enter into a agreement and let the disti (and us) know where
you think you are going, and how many you will need.


I can understand that attitude for people buying ten thousand chips;
but where do you expect people to get the experience with FPGAs that
they have with microprocessors, when state-of-the-art FPGAs are two
orders of magnitude more expensive and an order of magnitude less
convenient to acquire?

The cost is at the FPGA representative, distributing the stuff.
They get the questions asked.

No, the distis only have as much markup as the maker allows. I have
been though the quotation cycle and nothing gets done without Xilinx
authorizing it.

Because they are a fair representation of the costs associated with
small numbers of parts ordered through distribution to allow for a
profitable business by the distis and reps.


But, again, why doesn't the same argument apply to CPUs, for which
there are half a dozen distributors in most towns, fairly happily
distributing the things for a couple of percent profit margin.

You say it. There are half a dozend shop selling cpus per town.
You go there, get a cpu, no questions asked, no questions answered.
They wouldn't be able to answer anyway.

There may be one FPGA representaive per state. And you ask a lot of
questions. Not because you're more stupid than a cpu buyer, but
because placing a cpu and applying an FPGA are completely different.

That part is true, but I think most of the expense is by the maker, the
disti only has one support person for any given manufacturer. It is not
that much of a cost burden for them. And they will very much limit the
amount of support they give you if you are not a large customer.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[Rick Collins]

Steve wrote:

Rene Tschaggelar <none@none.net> wrote in message news:<402405f0$0$714$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch>...

I can understand that attitude for people buying ten thousand chips;
but where do you expect people to get the experience with FPGAs that
they have with microprocessors, when state-of-the-art FPGAs are two
orders of magnitude more expensive and an order of magnitude less
convenient to acquire?

The cost is at the FPGA representative, distributing the stuff.
They get the questions asked.

Xilinx have a revenue of $1.2bn according to this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=xlnx

Are you seriously trying to say that the cost of an FPGA
representative being asked questions has anything other than a
negligible effect on the prices of FPGAs?

There are a large number of costs associated with a customer. Mainly it
is in the support, but there is also the cost of the tools which must be
spread over all customers. They learned a long time ago that it is
better to make each customer pay equally for the tools and keep that
cost out of the chip price as much as they can. Otherwise they favor
the small customers over the large ones. It is the large customers that
make money for them.

But, again, why doesn't the same argument apply to CPUs, for which
there are half a dozen distributors in most towns, fairly happily
distributing the things for a couple of percent profit margin.

You say it. There are half a dozend shop selling cpus per town.
You go there, get a cpu, no questions asked, no questions answered.
They wouldn't be able to answer anyway.

You don't expect such shops to be able to answer your questions, but
the problem is that there just aren't any shops that you can buy FPGAs
from.

Maybe not brick and mortar, but you can buy FPGAs from Digikey which is
not much different from any other online retailer.


--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (6 Feb 2004 22:12:21 -0800) it happened Bassman59a@yahoo.com
(Andy Peters) wrote in <9a2c3a75.0402062212.527c53a0@posting.google.com>:

There has to be a way for the small garage shop guys to
get parts.
I agree with an other poster that Xilinx needs to improve on this, and make

a website where yiou can order any quantity of anything they make.
That would bring prices down, as distributors are taken out of the chain.
More and more companies sell directly via the internet.
I do not see how this would reduce sales for Xilinx, unless all there sales
are stocking the distributors.

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

Rick Collins wrote:

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:


Because they are a fair representation of the costs associated with
small numbers of parts ordered through distribution to allow for a
profitable business by the distis and reps.


But, again, why doesn't the same argument apply to CPUs, for which
there are half a dozen distributors in most towns, fairly happily
distributing the things for a couple of percent profit margin.

You say it. There are half a dozend shop selling cpus per town.
You go there, get a cpu, no questions asked, no questions answered.
They wouldn't be able to answer anyway.

There may be one FPGA representaive per state. And you ask a lot of
questions. Not because you're more stupid than a cpu buyer, but
because placing a cpu and applying an FPGA are completely different.


That part is true, but I think most of the expense is by the maker, the
disti only has one support person for any given manufacturer. It is not
that much of a cost burden for them. And they will very much limit the
amount of support they give you if you are not a large customer.

Unfortunately this as wrong, as you can get wrong.
This may have been this way years ago and it proved wrong. The
distributors realized that luckily. The business works a bit
different. There are companies who want a new product and pay for the
development. There are those who do a development and there are others
who actually manufacture the parts. The first mentioned company sells
the final products then. Now who needs the support, and who buys the
most parts ?
As developper, I seldom buy more than 10 pieces. But also I introduce
the new technologies into many other companies, be they my costomers
or may they become my customers. Meaning there is no sense in flooding
those who buy the most parts with PR materials. The decisions are done
long befoe they buy the parts.

Rene
--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

 

[Jim Granville]

Tim wrote:

Austin Lesea wrote:


We can't seem to convince disti's to work for free


So why don't you sell off your web pages for people
who don't want FAE support and the rest?

The price curves are all political/Marketing decisions.

Sometimes IC makers promote ICs through disti's at (say) the 10K
price for ALL lower volumes.

Why ? - It's a great marketing ramp tool, and gets their device onto
designers radar.
For those design-ins that hit 10K, it has real benefit, and for
the others that did not, what did it REALLY cost them ? -
In silicon terms very little, and maybe a couple of lunches for the
Distis to convince them this will actually seed sales, and maybe
some coverage/support payments.

Another sales-seed path is web sales.
Microchip do this very well - Xilix could learn there...

Now, all that activity occurs mainly in devices looking to push
growth.

I've seen it with Motorola and their newest FLASH uC, and also
IIRC with the Coolrunner made by - oh yes, Xilinx.
Now, of course they CAN do the same with FPGA's, but as they don't
NEED to, until Altera does, not much will change....

-jg

 

[Tim]

Jim Granville wrote:

Tim wrote:
Austin Lesea wrote:


We can't seem to convince disti's to work for free


So why don't you sell off your web pages for people
who don't want FAE support and the rest?

The price curves are all political/Marketing decisions.

Sometimes IC makers promote ICs through disti's at (say) the 10K
price for ALL lower volumes.

Sometimes I feel that X would get a better result by
using distributors whose primary business was
distributing computer cases or bananas or other
low-tech stuff. Ego-free distribution.

And the low-tech/web/... distribution should sell only
the fastest speed grade, cutting the parts count by two
or three.

 

[rickman]

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

Rick Collins wrote:
That part is true, but I think most of the expense is by the maker, the
disti only has one support person for any given manufacturer. It is not
that much of a cost burden for them. And they will very much limit the
amount of support they give you if you are not a large customer.


Unfortunately this as wrong, as you can get wrong.
This may have been this way years ago and it proved wrong. The
distributors realized that luckily. The business works a bit
different. There are companies who want a new product and pay for the
development. There are those who do a development and there are others
who actually manufacture the parts. The first mentioned company sells
the final products then. Now who needs the support, and who buys the
most parts ?
As developper, I seldom buy more than 10 pieces. But also I introduce
the new technologies into many other companies, be they my costomers
or may they become my customers. Meaning there is no sense in flooding
those who buy the most parts with PR materials. The decisions are done
long befoe they buy the parts.

I think we may have a bit of a language barrier, so your points are not
completely clear. I am sure the salesmen know the difference between a
small company building a small volume product and a small company
building a large volume product for another company. On the other hand,
I have been told point blank that it can be very hard for the FAEs and
salesmen to track a project between companies in this way and as a
result, they do not get the credit (or the profit) from the ultimate
sale. So they are very reluctant to devote much time to such projects.
I got this straight from the horses mouth (so to speak).

They are much more inclined to assist the companies who design the
products they sell in large numbers and as a result you can count on
both support and a good parts price.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

rickman wrote:

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

Rick Collins wrote:

That part is true, but I think most of the expense is by the maker, the
disti only has one support person for any given manufacturer. It is not
that much of a cost burden for them. And they will very much limit the
amount of support they give you if you are not a large customer.


Unfortunately this as wrong, as you can get wrong.
This may have been this way years ago and it proved wrong. The
distributors realized that luckily. The business works a bit
different. There are companies who want a new product and pay for the
development. There are those who do a development and there are others
who actually manufacture the parts. The first mentioned company sells
the final products then. Now who needs the support, and who buys the
most parts ?
As developper, I seldom buy more than 10 pieces. But also I introduce
the new technologies into many other companies, be they my costomers
or may they become my customers. Meaning there is no sense in flooding
those who buy the most parts with PR materials. The decisions are done
long befoe they buy the parts.


I think we may have a bit of a language barrier, so your points are not
completely clear. I am sure the salesmen know the difference between a
small company building a small volume product and a small company
building a large volume product for another company. On the other hand,
I have been told point blank that it can be very hard for the FAEs and
salesmen to track a project between companies in this way and as a
result, they do not get the credit (or the profit) from the ultimate
sale. So they are very reluctant to devote much time to such projects.
I got this straight from the horses mouth (so to speak).

They are much more inclined to assist the companies who design the
products they sell in large numbers and as a result you can count on
both support and a good parts price.

Ok. My points. It may work the way you described where there are
plenty of big companies doing big projects. Over here, many big
companies are a mere shaddow of themselves after the new economy
took over and they were rationalized to death or near death.
Many new small businesses took over the lead in applying technology.
I'm lucky that my distributor, selling Altera parts (amongst others),
takes the time to provide me with, compared with my sales volume,
excessive support.
Yes, we may talk about who the project is for.


Rene
--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

 

[Nial Stewart]

"Rick Collins" <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:40255850.62EF5633@yahoo.com...

Steve wrote:> > So why are your small quantity prices so inflated?

Perhaps you should take an econ class, all kidding aside. I had a very
brief one in high school and the most basic concept (next to guns vs.
butter) is that of fixed costs vs. marginal costs. Even though they
don't *make* the parts in 100 unit lots, there are fixed costs
associated with selling them in 100 unit lots. This mainly has to do
with support, I would expect.

But there is also the issue of motivation. If you are running a company
that has customers buying literally millions of parts a year and
customers buying 100's of parts a year, are you going to give the small
customer anywhere near the same prices as the big customer? No, you are
going to shave every possible penny on the price you must to keep the
big customer from buying the competitor's parts. The 100 unit customer
is not even a consideration.

But _every_ big customer started as a small customer, and if you can
get people trained up and familiar with your P&R software and
design process it's a big risk for them to change to a competitor.

The problem is that if X does this A will _have_ to follow suit.
It's an oligopoly, it's in both their interests to keep low volume
prices up.

Besides, if you are buying only 100 of a part, is it a big issue if you
pay 2x for the part? If you are building a product, you are likely
selling the product for 3, 5 or even 10x your parts cost. Otherwise you
will be losing a little on each one you sell, and will be out of
business soon.

It depends what the product it. If it's a custom product for
someone the BOM cost is probably insignificant in the overall
product development cost.

If you're a small company trying to get a novel product out it
can be a very big issue, FPGA pricing is likely to dominate
your overall product cost, making the product viable or not.


Nial

------------------------------------------------
Nial Stewart Developments Ltd
FPGA and High Speed Digital Design
www.nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk

 

[Steve]

Rick Collins <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<402559B3.AFBBB736@yahoo.com>...

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

The cost is at the FPGA representative, distributing the stuff.
They get the questions asked.

No, the distis only have as much markup as the maker allows. I have
been though the quotation cycle and nothing gets done without Xilinx
authorizing it.

So Xilinx /do/ fix their prices. Surely this is against competition laws??


--
Steve

 

[William Wallace]

steve41@totalise.co.uk (Steve) wrote in message news:<4d3ee211.0402070631.4ee1b54@posting.google.com>...

Rene Tschaggelar <none@none.net> wrote in message news:<402405f0$0$714$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch>...

I can understand that attitude for people buying ten thousand chips;
but where do you expect people to get the experience with FPGAs that
they have with microprocessors, when state-of-the-art FPGAs are two
orders of magnitude more expensive and an order of magnitude less
convenient to acquire?

The cost is at the FPGA representative, distributing the stuff.
They get the questions asked.


Xilinx have a revenue of $1.2bn according to this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=xlnx

Are you seriously trying to say that the cost of an FPGA
representative being asked questions has anything other than a
negligible effect on the prices of FPGAs?

In-state factory FAEs, Disty FAEs. Sales teams that must be incentivized
to drum up demand for new parts. Then customers who go out and convert
their FPGA to CGAs as soon as production ramps up.

FPGAs are not like CPUs. They are often prototype platforms.
Low volume, abandoned by the customer as soon as the design is
stable and can be converted to a CGA or ASIC.

FPGAs are inexpensive in my view, and the software tools are
amazing. It's a good time to be an engineer.

But if you know a way to bring the equivalent of a Xilinx offering
for 25% of the price, join the marketplace, please.

 

[Austin Lesea]

Steve wrote:

Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<c00e21$77m1@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>...

Steve,

Quite frankly, I am amazed at how folks think about this. You have
obviously never thought about that computer on your desk, and how it can
be sold for $499!



I don't know about the US PC prices, but in the UK you can make your
own PC for not that much more than you buy a new ready-built PC from a
shop. Compare that to Xilinx where small quantities are a few hundred
percent more expensive than in large quantities.

Oh really?

You can layout the motherboard, buy all of the components, fab the
motherboard, get all the eproms programmed, etc etc etc.

Sure.

Austin

 

[John_H]

"Steve" <steve41@totalise.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4d3ee211.0402090355.49f7aa40@posting.google.com...

So Xilinx /do/ fix their prices. Surely this is against competition laws??

If Xilinx colluded with other FPGA manufacturers to have a fixed price where
each competitor agrees not to undercut the other, they would be guilty of
price fixing -- this is not the case. When you go to the store to buy
Tostitos (a different form of chips) you often see the price is pre-marked
on the bag - surely this is a form of price fixing! In reality, this is
setting a suggested price; some stores have a different price sticker on top
of the pre-printed amount. Semiconductor manufacturers provide their
distributors and sales people with price books that give parts and grades
for what is available. There is no harm in this. Better prices can be had,
but only if you TALK with the people involved, either the Xilinx sales folks
or the distributor's sales people.

 

[rickman]

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

Ok. My points. It may work the way you described where there are
plenty of big companies doing big projects. Over here, many big
companies are a mere shaddow of themselves after the new economy
took over and they were rationalized to death or near death.
Many new small businesses took over the lead in applying technology.
I'm lucky that my distributor, selling Altera parts (amongst others),
takes the time to provide me with, compared with my sales volume,
excessive support.
Yes, we may talk about who the project is for.

Ask your distributor how they will be compensated for the sales that go
into the product you are designing. If they are lucky, you have been
able to identify both the company you are doing this for as well as the
product name. I was told that this information is "registered" with the
manufacturer and they get credit for the sales no matter which
distributor actually makes the sale. But if the product can not be
tracked this way, they get nothing.

There is also some incentive on your part (or your customer's) to
provide this tracking info. If they quote you a better than list price
to get the design win, this better price will only be good through that
distributor since they get a price cut from the manufacturer. But other
distis who are not on the registered design win will not get the better
price and will likely have to charge a bit more.

At least this is how it was described to me.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[rickman]

Steve wrote:

Rick Collins <spamgoeshere4@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<402559B3.AFBBB736@yahoo.com>...
Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

The cost is at the FPGA representative, distributing the stuff.
They get the questions asked.

No, the distis only have as much markup as the maker allows. I have
been though the quotation cycle and nothing gets done without Xilinx
authorizing it.

So Xilinx /do/ fix their prices. Surely this is against competition laws??

I think I misspoke (or is it mistyped?). I should have said, the distis
only have as much *markdown* as the makers allow. This is just a matter
of the manufacturer giving a discount on a qualified design win. The
disti is not going to sell the parts at a loss. So to get a better
price the manufacturer has to agree to a lower price to the disti for
this customer.

I don't think that is illegal. Heck, they do this for the government
all the time.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[John_H]

"Steve" <steve41@totalise.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4d3ee211.0402070644.6fbcc3bd@posting.google.com...

Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com> wrote in message
news:<qhvfmjde2i.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com>...
Austin wrote:
Quite frankly, I am amazed at how folks think about this. You have
obviously never thought about that computer on your desk, and how it
can
be sold for $499! Or even your car, just go price the parts
individually some time.

Thomas Womack <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
I've often priced the parts for building a computer, and they add up
to something within 15% of the price of buying the computer from Dell.

You may have priced the subassemblies such as the motherboard, CD-ROM
drive, etc. Try pricing the actual components (chips, passives, etc.)
in
small quantity. You'll be lucky if you can get a total BOM cost less
than five times Dell's price.

The total BOM cost in small quantities is irrelevant because you can
buy motherboards from as little as Ł40 (~$60) in the shops. The issue
is that if you buy Xilinx parts in large quantities then you're
alright, if you don't buy in large quantities then you have to put up
with high unit prices so those that want to buy high volume chips in
small quantities don't benefit from the economies of scale for these
parts.

"The motherboard price is irrelevant because you can buy computers for as
little as $299."
The point WAS that buying the individual parts cost significantly more. The
motherboards DO have huge production runs that push the cost of the bare
board below $10 - a value I had considered absurdly low when I worked on
projects with 25-125/mo production levels. With 1k-10k per month production
levels now, we're seeing prices around $10 bare-board prices for our
motherboard-sized assemblies. The motherboard manufacturers get large
discounts because of volumes. The technical support goes to very few
engineers for a short time to produce the massive quantity. The "Cost of
Sales" is a very big factor in any industry and isn't much different for
selling to a small company versus selling to a conglomerate for similar
products (at very different volumes).

The market works because small companies still make money (if they're
properly managed by people who understand what it takes to build and sell
products profitably). If small companies are mismanaged, they will fail.
If large companies are mismanaged, they will go bunkrupt without management
intervention. Weeding out the people with unrealistic ideas of what the
market should do for them so they can make the profit they need (on a
product that isn't worth what it *should* cost for the appropriate margins)
will help to elevate the overall quality of products offered.

Again, see Economics.

 

[Steve]

Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<c08aer$bnt1@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>...

Steve wrote:
Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<c00e21$77m1@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>...

Steve,

Quite frankly, I am amazed at how folks think about this. You have
obviously never thought about that computer on your desk, and how it can
be sold for $499!



I don't know about the US PC prices, but in the UK you can make your
own PC for not that much more than you buy a new ready-built PC from a
shop. Compare that to Xilinx where small quantities are a few hundred
percent more expensive than in large quantities.


Oh really?

Really. If you bought all the components from a relatively cheap place
like:

http://www.scan.co.uk/

I'd bet you could make the same spec PC yourself for a similar price
to what you'd pay for a built one from the UK's leading PC retailer:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/

You can layout the motherboard, buy all of the components, fab the
motherboard, get all the eproms programmed, etc etc etc.

Why would I want to lay the motherboard out, buy all of the single
components etc etc blah blah when I can buy them from a shop??

The problem with Xilinx products is that unless you buy in large
quantities you can't get them at a reasonable unit price.

Sure.

What irrelevant "analogy" are you going to come out with next; FGPAs
in small quantities are excellent value for money because try making
your own out of individual transistors??...

--
Steve

 

[Steve]

msm30@yahoo.com (William Wallace) wrote in message news:<7e4865b7.0402090716.baca77b@posting.google.com>...

steve41@totalise.co.uk (Steve) wrote in message news:<4d3ee211.0402070631.4ee1b54@posting.google.com>...
Rene Tschaggelar <none@none.net> wrote in message news:<402405f0$0$714$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch>...

Xilinx have a revenue of $1.2bn according to this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=xlnx

Are you seriously trying to say that the cost of an FPGA
representative being asked questions has anything other than a
negligible effect on the prices of FPGAs?

In-state factory FAEs, Disty FAEs. Sales teams that must be incentivized
to drum up demand for new parts. Then customers who go out and convert
their FPGA to CGAs as soon as production ramps up.

FPGAs are not like CPUs. They are often prototype platforms.
Low volume, abandoned by the customer as soon as the design is
stable and can be converted to a CGA or ASIC.

Read the statements that the Xilinx suits say about ASICs vs FPGAs,
they say that ASICs are frequently being *replaced* by FPGAs.

FPGAs are inexpensive in my view,

In large quantities, not in small quantities.

and the software tools are
amazing. It's a good time to be an engineer.

Do you work for a large company that buys FPGAs in large quantities by
any chance?

But if you know a way to bring the equivalent of a Xilinx offering
for 25% of the price, join the marketplace, please.

My point is that unless you buy in large quantities then small or
start-up companies can't put Xilinx parts in their products because
they're too expensive.


--
Steve