Xilinx 7 Series Lifecycle Extended, delayed 8 Series?

[BMiller]

Today I saw a notice Xilinx is "extending" support for the 7 series...

https://go.xilinx.com/NDA5LVdZWC03MjQAAAGHYbWmBwsyVQgfGJwIWQFXtmzSRn8MjpFZPGmLUO0vfioh9oZzht4nhPcusEZdJy9Thms_ENc=

Should I interpret this as they plan to delay announcing an 8 series? The 7 series is not only long in the tooth (particularly in hardware time - 28nm is huge by recent standards), but relatively slow as well...

[asmi]

The "8 series" is already out for many years - it's called "UltraScale" and built on 20nm process. Their "9 series" is also out - called "UltraScale+" and built on 16nm process.

[BMiller]

2 hours ago, asmi said:

The "8 series" is already out for many years - it's called "UltraScale" and built on 20nm process. Their "9 series" is also out - called "UltraScale+" and built on 16nm process.

Thanks! Hopefully given how long these have been out, the Spartan/Artix ultrascale(+?) SOMs will be out in quantity at competitive price points to the 7 series.. the only one I see out now is rather dear.

[asmi]

6 hours ago, BMiller said:

Thanks! Hopefully given how long these have been out, the Spartan/Artix ultrascale(+?) SOMs will be out in quantity at competitive price points to the 7 series.. the only one I see out now is rather dear.

I don't think US/US+ devices were ever concieved as being competitive to 7 series, at least on the lower end, they are much faster (fabric in US+ devices is over 2x faster than that of Artix-7 according to my tests!), but they are also more expensive - so they are competitive in the mid-end and high-end, but there is nothing for the low-end. I suppose that's why Xilinx/AMD has extended the lifetime of 7 series.