Cost of development tools

[armandas]

There is one thing that ticks me off every time I think about using FPGAs or CPLDs for my projects. That thing is the price for a Xilinx USB programming cable: 225 USD! How on earth can this thing be so expensive? The starter kit I currently use costs $189, but it has all the peripherals etc. INCLUDING usb programming support.

I thought that affordable development tools is a good business practice. Not for Xilinx apparently..

The cheapest I could find is $145 for a "compatible" unit, but that's still bit high.

P.S. Feel free to rant about or praise other development tools, relevant to you.

[charliex]

The digilent platform 1 is cheaper http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,395&Cat=5

It's what the market will bear, Xilinx originally didn't have a free dev tool either, lots of large corp and government contracts no doubt. Last night i ended up buying an AVR STK600 + adapter because it was cheaper than buying just the TQFP64 adapter for my eeprom programmer... BDM's are what kill me though, I have stacks of them, the prices are all over the shop.


But if you think those are expensive, try emulators, the lauterbachs cost as much as a decent car.

[armandas]

89 USD! Now we're talking. Thanks for the link.

I'm probably not prepared to face prices of the real world But I guess if you get to the point where company pays for your toys, it doesn't matter any more.

[joelby]

It might not help if you already have a board, but for anyone else interested in getting in to FPGAs, Avnet have a Spartan 3 evaluation kit for $50 that can be programmed over USB. It also includes a Cypress PSoC and a programming cable for that - the cable must be dirt cheap if they can throw it in! The kit uses the PSoC to program the FPGA's flash, and presumably avoid having to bother with JTAG.

[charliex]

fyi though some of the digilent adapters require their software, and don't work with the xilinx software, ( adept)

some of them have plugins for ise