6 May
2010
6 May
'10
7:46 p.m.
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 10:17 PM, Florian Faber <faber(a)faberman.de> wrote:
The Spartan 3 doesn't cost that much. What's in the firmware is what
makes them expensive.
Certainly the firmware development time is costly, but it's also already
been spent and other than ongoing maintenance, a cost that has most likely
already been recouped as well. The real question is are they continuing to
put FPGA's in their new "prosumer" oriented products, such as
http://www.rme-audio.de/download/sheets/babyface_e.pdf (nb: the term "FPGA"
is used 0 times in this document).
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/moelbryn/raggedstone1.html indicates the
starting point for just the spartan 3, and support chips is already above
what most "prosumer" cards cost -- $100.00. Unlike custom VLSI, you can't
just plop a FPGA on the pci bus. Note that the Xilinx isn't the only chip on
this card: http://www.soundworks.dk/images/rme/hdsp9632_big.jpg -- there's
at least 6 other chips in the "digital" part of the card, some of
high-complexity/integration/cost based on their pincount -- in addition to
the Xilinx chip. That includes an additional Xilinx chip (flash memory??)
that is clearly visible on the above pictured board.
Some business people will give a back-of-the-envelope calculation that a
$20.00 increase in parts cost translates to a $100.00 increase in consumer
cost. And the above estimated $100 parts cost of an RME's fpga and support
chips translates to a card that costs $500.00 more e.g.
http://www.amazon.com/RME-Hammerfall-9652-Audio-Interface/dp/B0002H030S/
RME can and will continue to do what it does very well -- and priced at "you
get what you pay for rates."
Just seems that since they've got the entire thing already programmed out in
an FPGA, they could build a VLSI at little incremental cost. It's not like
they're starting from scratch... And given the look of the "BabyFace"
perhaps some of their new products will indicate a shift towards this
strategy (?).
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I've always seen FPGA as something to use for
one-off or very low-volume projects. For example
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/ :-) But I have no idea of how many cards RME
sells a year. Actually, that would be a very interesting number, just to get
an idea of the order-of-magnitude size of the "pro" end of the DAW market..
-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com
