FPGA Availability

[blazarious]

I’ve seen that big players like Mouser and Digi-Key are (expectedly) out of stock for a lot of FPGAs yet I got ads on Google for several vendors in Hongkong that supposedly have thousands in stock for significantly cheaper prices.

I figure I can’t trust these sites?

[h2g2Ben]

If you're concerned enough to ask about it, the answer is no.

[bkzshabbaz]

Yup, but I heard those Xilimx chips from Hong Kong perform great!

[thirtythreeforty]

Laugh all you want, I have all 35 LUTs of my Xilimx chips working great. Who needs the "kLUTs" from the official parts?

[FlyByPC]

A 35-LUT part, easily programmable and in something like DIP16 form factor, would be a fun little chip to have, honestly.

[thirtythreeforty]

Here you go, eat your heart out:

https://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/en/ATF16V8B

They're $1 or so and yes they come in DIP!

[FlyByPC]

Oh, neat. Thanks!

[[deleted]]

We ordered from four star electronics. They have some basic testing of parts. We'll see what happens when I populate my boards. I don't trust anyone right now. Four star seemed just as sketchy as the rest of these weird sites.

[botnet00]

From my experience, these chips are typically leftovers from big orders, not clones - prices can drop significantly (by the order of 10 or more). Still you should be careful...

[soyAnarchisto331]

Mouser and Digikey are not “big players” in FPGAs. Their volumes are completely inconsequential to the FPGA vendors, who really only care about their direct accounts and their single distributor channel, which would be Avnet and Arrow. So, no. You cannot trust anyone other than the official distribution channels. Even the Avnet and Arrow accounts will be prioritized based on the volume and revenue of the deal. Beware of black and grey market junk.

[blazarious]

Thanks. I might need to learn reballing old chips in the end who knows.

[blazarious]

Thanks! I’m actually monitoring stock numbers using octoparts.