End of the Global Semiconductor Shortage?
After three very difficult years, BMOW’s experience with the global semiconductor shortage is finally starting to improve. During most of 2020-2023, even common chips like voltage regulators were hard to get, and a few essential chips that are required for Floppy Emu and Yellowstone were completely unavailable for periods of months or even years. I previously wrote about the business difficulties this created in Global Chip Shortage Hits Home, Semiconductor Shortage and Business Threat, and Yellowstone Future Forecast Update. It’s been rough.
I’m happy to report that this storm is beginning to wind down, and the skies are clearing. Last week I received a long-awaited shipment of Xilinx XC9572XL chips for Floppy Emu that I’d ordered nine months ago, and today I received word from Digikey that the Lattice LCMXO2-1200 for Yellowstone is back in stock again after being completely unavailable everywhere for 1.5 years. The Atmel ATMEGA1284p for Floppy Emu isn’t generally in stock, but supplies are available directly from Microchip with “only” a few months’ delay on back-orders. It’s not a perfect situation, but it’s a huge improvement on a year ago.
The downside is that chip prices have increased substantially, especially for some of the older chips that I use. For that Xilinx chip specifically, the XC9572XL used to be around $2 each when purchased in large quantities, and now it’s $9.66 each with no quantity discounts available. Ouch!
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Im not surprised prices are high… there’s so much pent-up demand for some of these that they can probably charge whatever they want for some of them until the backlog of orders is filled. Hopefully prices will become more sane in a few months.
Being a Xilinx customer right now is like winning a house in a competition, only to find the house is in Bakhmut…
The price increases AMD/Xilinx have pushed though for their CPLDs are maximally cynical. They’re clearly trying to milk anyone who has existing designs, at the expense of killing their CPLD business long-term.
The XC9572XL is the chip I most of my designs, and it’s so expensive now it’s cheaper for me to re-design all those products around an FPGA and some 5v/3.3v level shifters than the keep buying CPLDs. And those FPGAs won’t be coming from Xilinx; once bitten, and all that.
I have a design in-progress that uses an XC95144XL-144, those now cost £18 per unit. I can buy a considerably more capable Lattice FPGA, and all the required level shifters, for about £6. If I stick with Xilinx I’m basically setting fire to £12 with each unit I sell. Fortunately there’s still time to re-design this product.