Replacement: None. We're no longer building the development board or breakout for this FPGA so we've stopped stocking it. This page is for reference only.
The Spartan-3 platform was the industry’s first 90nm FPGA, delivering more functionality and bandwidth per dollar than was previously possible, setting new standards in the programmable logic industry. The Spartan-3E platform builds on the success of the earlier Spartan-3 platform by adding new features that improve system performance and reduce the cost of configuration. Because of their exceptionally low cost, Spartan-3 generation FPGAs are ideally suited to a wide range of consumer electronics applications, including broadband access, home networking, display/projection, and digital television equipment.
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Any tutorials in the works for a product like this? What about a breakout? Always wanted to get into FPGAs... Thanks!
Sorry, we actually carried a breakout board a while ago and until recently a development board. But alas, they didn't sell well so we stopped carrying them. That's actually why we have the chips, we're getting rid of the last of our stock.
It's a shame honestly... I just ordered one of the development boards and I was able to get it up and working within about 15 minutes using a Digilent JTAG cable... ISE 14.2 actually runs reliably now under Ubuntu 12.10. The development board is turning out to be super useful for prototyping... I think the problem was that most folks just had trouble getting out of the gate... That problem could have been solved... :-)
Our older products are retired, but be sure to check out the new Papillo One board, which combines a Spartan FPGA with Arduino-like ease of use!
For this chip to have the "featured" 232 user IO & 92 diff. pairs implies the 320 BGA package (at least according to the datasheet provided). The pictures clearly show a fine-pitch PQG package.
Thanks, sorry about that!
What do these do exactly?
FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array. It contains a grid of hundreds of thousands of interconnected logic cells that can be programmed to be... anything. Where a computer has programmable software, this is programmable hardware. These are traditionally very advanced parts, but if you're intrigued, check out the Papilio board which has an FPGA and great introductory software to program it into various useful devices.
I wish I knew enough about electronics to be able to use these. But alas, I can still barely get the push button serial example working. :(
Wow talk about timing! I was just looking for these.