Overview

Extended Spartan-3A - Delivering the Lowest Total Cost. Period.

Extended Spartan®-3A FPGAs offers the lowest total cost for system designs. These devices are optimized to use in high-volume, cost-sensitive applications targeting consumer, wired and wireless communications, networking and many other applications.

Lowest system cost

The Extended Spartan-3A family establishes the lowest system cost by eliminating many external components with the integration of many system features. Most notably, only two power rails are needed which dramatically reduces board cost and manufacturing cost. When you combine all these costs, this can be a savings of up to 50% over competing devices.

In addition to having lower static power, this family received the Portable Design Award for its innovative dual power management modes. These dual modes provide instant power savings and also eliminates the need for extra components which lowers both system cost and power consumption. Advanced software tools also extend the power savings with the option to optimize for a low power design.

The Extended Spartan-3A family also features low cost security with Device DNA to secure your design and minimize the risk of cloning, unauthorized overbuilding and reverse engineering. This robust low-cost security system is customizable to fit your security needs.

Cost-effecient logic design

We realize that time is money so having solutions that save design time translates to lowering your total cost. Xilinx has made a substantial investment in creating the industry’s largest selection of IP and reference designs. Check out our comprehensive IP and reference designs to see for yourself. With support for over 25 I/O standards, the Extended Spartan-3A family helps reduce board cost by eliminating extra components.

When a non-volatile solution is what you need, Xilinx has the answer. The Spartan-3AN platform is a single chip solution for quick and easy field upgradeability using the Multiboot feature. With up to 11Mb of on-chip user Flash, the memory can be used for both device configuration as well as a system resource – saving valuable board space and lowering cost.

Not sure which device to use? No problem. Migration between the standard and non-volatile devices is supported making last minute changes quick and easy.

Low-cost complex computation and embedded processing

The Extended Spartan-3A family also boasts devices with a multitude of DSP48A blocks hardened blocks specifically for implementing complex algorithms. These blocks are optimized to deliver 250 MHz operation in the slowest speed grade and over 30 GMACs.  This cost-optimized solution efficiently implements complex functions saving valuable resources.

MicroBlaze™ embedded soft processor can be utilized in the Extended Spartan-3A FPGAs. Using this can reduce your BOM and reduce your risk of obsolescence. This is a versatile processor that can also help reduce inventory cost by using common flexible embedded processing architectures across multiple products.