Motorola cuts prices on FPGA family up to half

Electronic News, August 18, 1997

Phoenix, Ariz.--Attempting to keep pace with its programmable logic device (PLD) competitors, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector will today reduce the price of its MPA1000 field programmable gate array (FPGA) family up to 52 percent.

Motorola was able to lower the prices of the SRAM-based FPGA family due to the increasing availability of high-volume production capacity. Motorola said being part of a high volume manufacturing company enables the company to reduce the price of its FPGA family and offer a variety of packaging options. According to Greg Kleinkopf, VP and director of programmable products for Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, the price reductions will enable OEMs to develop high performance, flexible, and programmable FPGA offerings that are cost-effective.

The 8,000-gate MPA1036 that was priced at $166.34 in 100-unit quantities previously is now priced at $80.33--a reduction of 52 percent. Motorola's 22,000 gate MPA1100, priced at $485.88 previously, is now priced at $272.21--a 44 percent reduction. The MPA1000 family will experience across the board reductions ranging from 16 to 52 percent, Motorola said.

Major price erosion of product families is nothing new in the PLD industry of late as the industry has witnessed an explosion of price slashing and PLD vendors attempt to outdo one another. One of the heated battles is between the industry leaders--Altera and Xilinx--who recently reduced the prices of some of their premier devices on the same day (EN, June 30). Altera reduced its Flex10K and Max 7000S series by up to 49 percent, while Xilinx reduced its XC9500 family of complex PLDs (CPLDs) up to 30 percent as well.

However Altera and Xilinx are not alone. Actel and (AMD) Vantis have reduced the prices of their devices as well. Actel's antifuse-based Integrator product family was reduced up to 70 percent while Vantis knocked its Mach family down 15 percent and began to offer a policy of "ISP for Free," or no longer having price premiums on its in-system programmable (ISP) devices.

Motorola's programmable products group, after a very quiet year in terms of sales in 1996, has made some significant waves this year acquiring the programmable logic division of Pilkington Microelectronics (PMEL) enabling them to own full ownership of the PMEL FPGA architecture, software and intellectual property (EN, March 24). Motorola later in the year at the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) unveiled plans for an analog FPGA for the high-volume PLD market (EN, May 12). At the time the company claimed the device was the only analog equivalent FPGA in development.