4 Ways to Buy FPGAs Online

Today, it’s easy than ever to find, compare and buy FPGAs online. Like any other ICs, FPGAs are also available in various online ecommerce shops that offer low and high-volume supply of FPGAs. Some websites also offer a very useful FPGA comparison tool to help select and compare between a range of available FPGA devices.

In this post, we have listed the top 4 websites that sell FPGAs online, with some details about each website functionality and benefits. We did not focus on pricing and shipping but rather on the front-end parametric search tool usability for FPGA design engineers.

DigiKey – Large Inventory

DigiKey has an FPGA database consisting of 21,456 devices from all 5 vendors: Intel, Xilinx, Lattice, Microchip and Microsemi. The database is, by far, the most comprehensive online FPGA devices database, offering users to choose from more than 20,000 different FPGA devices from their inventory.

DigiKey’s inventory size is already a great benefit to any engineer seeking a very specific FPGA device.

Their online tool allows you to select vendors, logic cell capacity, RAM size, number of I/O, voltage range and more. The tool is very easy to use and intuitive but requires users to have some knowledge about the available FPGA technologies and series.

DigiKey’s parametric search is very quick and can help searching for a specific FPGA in a specific packaging, in a specific quantity.

Click here to see DigiKey’s tool.

Mouser – Best Online Tool

Mouser inventory has only 11,850 FPGA devices and does not include Xilinx FPGA devices, which is one of the two major FPGA makers worldwide. Mouser’s tool is based also on parametric search allowing the users to narrow down the search by selecting between various parameters: FPGA vendors, number of logic blocks, number of I/Os, operating voltage, package time and more.

Mouser’s tool is dynamic and adjusts the items in each table to reflect the previous selection. This means that if one selects Intel (Altera), the entire tool will show all the available options based on Intel’s FPGA offering. Therefore, it’s more convenient and faster to use Mouser FPGA tool.

In our view, Mouser offers the best online search tool, so, if you do not plan to use Intel (Altera) FPGA’s (and if the price is right) then Mouser will be our choice.

Click here to see Mouser’s tool.

RS Components

RS Components has a very small databased with only 180 FPGA devices. The search tool has a very useful filter menu that helps selecting the desired FPGA chip. RS Components database on consist of: Xilinx, Lattice and Altera but surprisingly, their stock is very low.

Click here to see RS Components tool.

Farnell

Farnell’s FPGA offering is also limited in number of vendors and components. Farnell offers a selection between 596 FPGA devices from Xilinx, Altera and Lattice. Together with a graphic selection filter to allow users to find and buy the right FPGA device, Farnell’s tool is showing the price and availability as well as image of the different FPGA devices.

Click here to see Farnell’s tool.