I've ordered trays (and they send the OEM tray) - unique barcodes, legit.
> Just give me a plain FPGA and MCU with no wizards or GUIs or automatic code generation.
You can pretty much cut out all of their tools and get a pure Yocto/Vivado TCL build for the bitstream for the 7 series Zynqs. Very low touch.
Their IO planner (in the Vivado IP integrator) is somewhat necessary for complex peripheral scenarios and is one of the few things I ever use Xilinx GUI applications for anymore.
On the chance they're half reasonable, thanks for the link.
I've previously struggled to roll the dice for higher end parts as the cost difference isn't as extreme and had some obvious reballed parts a few years ago. If they're OK then their $20 XC7K325T will be at the top of my list...
In the way that that Aliexpress vendor lists the 7010 parts at 1/10th the price of LCSC, some of their $20-60 listings are also shockingly cheap in comparison.
Thanks for your write-ups btw, been following glScope development for a while.
Nowadays, I only often wish I had their ARMv8 chips instead of the old ARMv7 32bit architecture because that’s just showing its age, but that’s par for the course of using ARMv7, and doesn’t affect the PL side (much, except for interfacing sometimes).
Checking sketchier places Win-Source has the CLG400 package for $22.20 and even the cheapest aliexpress seller wants $4.84 for something marked as a 7Z010 that may or may not be legit.
Also "fight the chip" is pretty much the definition of what I did last time I did a zynq project. Just give me a plain FPGA and MCU with no wizards or GUIs or automatic code generation.