Looking at available FPGAs yesterday, I noted that Digi-Key has inventory of some plausible-looking chips from some company called "Efinix".
Who dat? Well, apparently the company was founded in 2012, turned up in the news without my noticing it in 2019, and is now shipping chips. Their "Trion" line looks promising for my purposes, at least for applications that don't need to operate above 100°C. At first glance, it looks like an upgrade from Xilinx's neglected Spartan 3E line, and at much lower prices.
So, gotta check it out, In My Copious Free Time. I guess my next Digi-Key order will include a dev kit, which apparently is how one gets a copy of the toolchain. Toolchain licensing is not clearly described, but it looks like a permanent license with subscription-based updates, which is exactly the model I need (given the 20-year support horizon on the stuff I tend to develop).
Only non-BGA package on offer is a 144-leg QFP, but I guess I can live with that. Um. Looks like the T20, while nominally having lots of LVDS pairs, only has 6 TX/6 RX bonded out in the QFP. This could be limiting, but... hm. Actually, for the application at hand (4-channel, 25 Msa/s ADC), 6 RX pairs should just handle it.
Now if only they offered mil/aero parts....
Update: Low-end eval kit is ordered; should be here in a few days. Efinix doesn't have a lot of documentation visible on the Web, unlike the older players. Datasheets for individual chips, yes; architecture documents, no - maybe such things exist but are linked from within other documents, but I'm not finding them anyplace obvious on the site.
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