Opal Kelly Blog

This article was sent to our newsletter subscribers in December 2021.
Some of this information may be stale.

This year has been challenging in a number of ways due to various supply chain issues affecting many industries worldwide. We expect these challenges to continue for several months. We also wanted to bring your attention to the imminent demise of Spartan-6 and how that affects our products, our customers, and the future of their products.

We have been told that Xilinx does not have semiconductor fab capacity to deliver existing orders for Spartan-6 FPGAs any time soon. While no official end-of-life notification has been issued, the understanding is that deliveries could be at least two years out. This effectively rings the death knell for most Spartan-6 designs as alternative technologies are available on a more palatable timeline.

Many of our Spartan-6 modules have corresponding Artix-7 modules that present an excellent opportunity to migrate existing designs to a newer FPGA technology with a longer runway. Due to generational compatibility with FrontPanel, many of these migrations will enjoy nearly drop-in software compatibility. Mechanical compatibility is available for several modules. Of course, electrical compatibility will need engineering review and gateware will need to be updated.

• XEM6001 designs can migrate to the XEM7001
• XEM6010 designs can migrate to the XEM7010 or XEM7310 (preferred)
• XEM6310 designs can migrate to the XEM7310
• Visit the XEM6010 to XEM7010 Migration Guide
• Visit the XEM6310 to XEM7310 Migration Guide

If you have any technical questions related to these migrations, our engineers will be happy to answer any questions. Please contact technical support at support@opalkelly.com.

Nearly all Spartan-6 inventory has been depleted to satisfy existing backorders. We do have some limited inventory still available. Please contact sales@opalkelly.com for details.

• XEM6001 – None available
• XEM6002 – None available
• XEM6006 – 31 pieces available
• XEM6010-LX45 – None available
• XEM6010PS-LX45 – 24 pieces available – This is a version of the XEM6010 with a different USB connector installed.
• XEM6010-LX150 – 9 pieces of -LX150I available
• XEM6310-LX45 – None available
• XEM6310-LX150 – None available

A few things…

• Inventory of our Artix-7 modules is limited and sales are limited to 2-pc per customer per month.
• Larger orders may be subject to lead times.
• As Spartan-6 projects migrate to the Artix-7, we expect demand for the XEM7001, XEM7010, and XEM7310 to increase. With supply chains still suffering, please consider this in your planning.
• Contact sales to share your long-term requirements so they can help out as best as possible.

We greatly appreciate your business and support. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

We have effectively been forced to terminate all Spartan-6 products due to lack of material. Note that many of these have been in limited production for over a year already due to diminished demand. The following products are now rated as end-of-life:

• XEM6001
• XEM6002 (entered limited production on 2020-03-05)
• XEM6006 (entered limited production on 2018-10-23)
• XEM6010 (all variants)
• XEM6110 (end of life since 2015-09-23)
• XEM6310 (all variants)
• XEM6310MT (all variants)