[email protected] (Kolja Sulimma) wrote in message news:<[email protected] om>...

> In germany for example Avnet and Insight are the only Xilinx
> distributors for your FPGAs. These are huge distributors that have an
> organization tailored for large customers with large orders.
> (My last insight order involved about a dozen emails from me and
> three letters from Insight. I can see that that is costly, but it is
> unecessary)

Avnet and Insight are the two biggies here in the states, too, and
you're right -- they don't wanna talk to you unless you're buying
multiple trays. Nu Horizons does have some stock of CoolRunners and I
was able to buy a handful, but maybe I just got lucky.

Arrow is usually much better about smaller quantities, but they don't
handle Xilinx.

DigiKey has a very limited stock of Xilinx stuff: smaller 95xx CPLDs
(all CoolRunner stuff is non-stock, mutliples of a tray), old XC3K and
XC4K parts (still very expensive, but if you need 'em they got 'em).
They do have some Spartan 2 stuff, but it's really hit or miss.
DigiKey really oughta be selling the CoolRunners.

> Why don't you get yourself a small distributor in addition to these?
> One without hundreds of FAEs. Without trade fair appearances that cost
> hundreds of thousands of dollars. One that is happy to stock a number
> of standard parts and make a 30% profit with them?

Or just let us buy small (prototype) quantities direct from Xilinx!
Yeah, X offers only three CoolRunner parts, 32 (real cheap), 64
(cheap) and 384 (expensive)! I actually didn't care too much that the
384 was expensive, but my design needed only a 128 and the 384 isn't
available in the package I wanted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, complain complain complain. 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.

--a