Can some one tell me what these are and how much they are worth please  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Dirtdirtyduh
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 10, 2019, 11:43:44 pm
content: I bought a bunch of these off some tweaker I know I seen the name before thought it may be something good so I got them please let me know what i should do with them i have no idea about any of this kind of stuff i just like flipping things making money please be honest

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2019, 11:55:24 pm
content: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-inc/XCVU440-1FLGB2377I/XCVU440-1FLGB2377I-ND/5843869but in that state probably not worth much

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 12:23:37 am
content: LOL, $45K, I don't think so!Nobody buys Xilinx FPGAs from Digikey, anyway.Good luck selling those in the pic at $100/pcs or so.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 01:35:16 am
content: Salvaging these IC parts from the board may be a big undertaking, I would think companies would not go that route, companies that would develop on such expensive platform would go through proper channels, obtaining samples from Xilinx and stuff. A mad scientist or hobbyist may be interested but unlikely to pay anything close to 4 digits. The parts condition is also unkown, if the board experienced an overvoltage the ICs may be dead. It would be a gamble for one to buy this board. Still some may be willing so I think you could put the board for an eBay auction with starting price of a couple hundred bucks and let the nature do its thing.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 02:32:39 am
content: First thing: you don't even know if any of those FPGAs are functional.Let's say they are... (but how are you going to test them?)Scavenging those huge BGAs would require unsoldering them (probably not too difficult with hot air and a *large* nozzle), but also REBALLING them (otherwise completely useless), which is not that easy to do and would be pretty much hit or miss especially given the very large number of pads.So hum. Yeah. Those parts, when bought new, are atrociously expensive, but I don't know who would be foolish enough to re-use them given the above. Even if they are sold for cheap - the required PCBs for doing anything useful with them would already cost a lot, so risking using non-functional parts? Yeah.Apart from the curious who'd like to 1/ try their reballing tools and skills and 2/ who'd like to see if the ICs could be reused, and make nice 4K Youtube videos about it...Just saying.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 02:51:02 am
content: One more thing about selling, those are very high tech chips, even for USA.There is a big chance for those FPGAs to be classified as ITAR products.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 03:46:43 am
content: There are a lot of parts recyclers in shenzhen who will probably take those for between $10 and $50 each. Reballing is easy and testing is trivial. They have BGA sockets and testing would just involve running JTAG boundary scan.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 04:02:30 am
content: Also don't be deceived by digikey prices. I know a few firms that get FPGAs direct from Xilinx, at volumes of a few hundred pcs that they pay no more than 1/10th of the distributor prices. The manufacturer of that board probably paid on the order of $3000 for those chips. Still very expensive, but if you look on the second hand chips market these devaluate by another factor of 10 (when they are tested working). If they are in unknown condition nobody will touch it except at rock bottom prices.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 04:22:25 am
content: Quote from: OwO on December 11, 2019, 04:02:30 amSome correction.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 05:51:33 am
content: That's a tough one, yes the parts are insanely expensive new, but the issue here is that no company building equipment around such high end parts is going to be interested in unknown salvaged chips, and they are FAR bigger than the typical FPGA hobbyist is going to have a use for, either they would need to pay big bucks for the paid development tools or find a pirated license file because those are well beyond what the free tools support. Designing a PCB to use one and then re-balling and soldering one is also going to be well beyond the capabilities of the typical hobbyist, BUT a very small handful of people would probably be willing to put forth the effort and follow through to bring one up just to see if they can.So my guess is pennies on the dollar compared to new price would be optimistic, maybe $20-$30 per IC to the right person. Considerably more if they were on a usable board containing at least the minimal amount of support hardware to power up the FPGA as the whole board could be re-purposed. As it stands, they are super cool artifacts that will be very difficult to unload as anything more than a curiosity or desk ornament. It's a little bit like if you took a modern 10TB hard drive back to 1995 and tried to sell it to someone, the amount of storage it contained would be worth an astronomical amount of money but SATA hadn't been invented yet so they'd have no reasonable way to make it work.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 06:06:22 am
content: Quote from: james_s on December 11, 2019, 05:51:33 amAny clue how much the ballpark number are those development tools/software cost ?

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 06:51:46 am
content: It costs a bit more, like this:...or more like this:

author: Dirtdirtyduh
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 10:48:49 am
content: So this was a lot of money at one time pretty positive they are in working condition

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 10:54:45 am
content: I gave you USD 50 for the full board deal?

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 12:18:47 pm
content: I wonder what was the missing chip, in the middle. It has a different footprint, slightly bigger. It's always the bigger chip in the middle that's missing.It reminds me of a prototype Kintex board (or maybe it was Virtex, I don't remember) I've seen some years ago. Xilinx didn't had the chip in production yet, they were still developing it, so they sent to major software developers an emulation of the chip, a board with some intermediary product that was lacking any physical I/O, but had the FPGA logic core, so we could test the logic of our designs in parallel with the development of the physical Xilinx chip.There are just too many Virtex UltraScale on the same board for a normal application, and no visible I/O, somebody should check if those are production chips or just prototype/engineering (pre)samples.

author: FenTiger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 12:47:49 pm
content: I've seen boards a bit like that used for simulating large ASIC designs before taping them out. They have lots of large FPGAs all close together, but they're all connected to each other, and there isn't a lot else on the board other than power supplies.

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 12:50:16 pm
content: Maybe a Virtex Ultrascale + with embedded 16gb HBM memory since there is no other memory on the PCB.Here is the 8GB HBM version:https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-inc/XCVU37P-3FSVH2892E/122-XCVU37P-3FSVH2892E-ND/10445719The unlisted 16GB HBM version with larger IO count is double price and I bet special order only.If I had to guess, I would design such boards like this as a once use case to proof emulate the core of a massive 3D accelerator GPU before getting ready to engineer the final ASIC, around 4-5 years ago. Today, even these FPGAs wouldn't cut it.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 02:15:28 pm
content: Quote from: Dirtdirtyduh on December 11, 2019, 10:48:49 amJust the fact of seeing you handle these without static protection and putting them on a freaking car seat, if I had a purpose for them I'd now consider them as faulty and not worth the effort reprocessing themI'd take one or 2 to use as keychain or something though.

author: jhpadjustable
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 04:58:29 pm
content: Quote from: BrianHG on December 11, 2019, 12:50:16 pmSpeculating freely, there is an Australian company by the name of Firetail Robotics that works with various autonomous applications including UAVs and could be military-adjacent. While that board might not be enough to satisfy spec-queen gamers, they might be enough to prototype some respectable machine vision tasks.

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 07:06:06 pm
content: Wouldn't Virtexes in that size be export restricted ?

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2019, 07:49:56 pm
content: I suspect that just PDS suitable for that kind of FPGA is going to cost a pretty penny.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2019, 06:27:32 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on December 11, 2019, 06:06:22 amI found this post from 2013, I would assume the cost is higher now but I've never checked.Software OnlyBuy Node-Locked LicensePrice: $2995Lead Time: ImmediateBuy Floating LicensePrice: $3595Lead Time: ImmediateNode-Locked vs Floating?Vivado System EditionBuy Online From XilinxSoftware OnlyBuy Node-Locked LicensePrice: $4795Lead Time: ImmediateBuy Floating LicensePrice: $5795Lead Time: ImmediateNode-Locked vs Floating?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2019, 06:55:14 am
content: Quote from: Kilrah on December 11, 2019, 02:15:28 pmExactly. They're effectively scrap at this point. Maybe some people on here will consider it worth their time but I doubt much money.

author: blacksheeplogic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2019, 11:57:24 pm
content: Quote from: Dirtdirtyduh on December 11, 2019, 10:48:49 amPretty Positive meansa) As long as it's not my time or finical riskb) I would put 10K in escrow to compensate someone for any time/expense if these are not in working condition?Please chose a OR b.As others have pointed out these would be high risky for anyone who had a use for them even at zero cost to invest time/effort into.Turn them into keychains and sell them at the local swap market for $5 a piece.

author: Mr.B
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 12:13:41 am
content: I wouldn’t give you $5 for the lot.It is way too much effort for me to remove them from the boards, then clean up the solder residue, drill a hole in the corner, fit a 10c keychain… and then waste 2 hours of my time trying to sell them at my local Saturday market to people who have no idea what they are.Hope you didn’t actually pay anything for that junk.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 12:33:14 am
content: I'm not so envy to say those worth nothing.Handling and ESD is not such a danger.Chances are all those FPGAs are in working condition, and perfectly reusable after reballing them. Definitely not something to throw away or destroy for a keychain.I would list them on e-bay, starting at bigger prices, and see how much I could get. Maybe not list them at $50k, but for sure worth much more than $5 or $50.

author: blacksheeplogic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 12:34:24 am
content: Quote from: Mr.B on December 13, 2019, 12:13:41 amI was trying to finish up my reply with a positive, but yea $5 could be a bit too optimistic.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 01:13:09 am
content: I think to the right person they are worth considerably more than nothing. A tiny fraction of their retail price for sure, but not zero. I mean how cool would it be to get a monster FPGA like that up and running? If I didn't have a lifetime of projects on my plate already I'd be interested in giving it a go but there are much better people than me out there to do something with one. The big problem is there are not very many of those people. It would need to be a dedicated hobbyist with FPGA experience, the sort of people building DIY high speed cameras and such. I've seen probably 4 or 5 people on YouTube who I'd give a reasonable chance of getting one working.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 02:22:01 am
content: In any case they need to be reballed. I am not into FPGAs so do not know how much reballing service may cost, it may not worth the effort if the goal is to try to sell after reballing, unless you ARE the person doing reballing. The OP said he is just a flipper.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 07:33:47 am
content: If you are looking to get some cash soon I would suggest to sell the Mercedes car.It is a faster process and you get much more money.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 07:35:25 am
content: Well ultimately they're worth whatever someone will pay for one. If it were me, I'd post them on ebay one board at a time with a starting bid of 99c and see where they go.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 08:03:31 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on December 13, 2019, 12:33:14 amIf you have a project that can make use of it you'll have hundreds of thousands of $ invested in the design already. Just delaying the project in case one of them is faulty would cost more than buying new ones...

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 09:31:53 am
content: Classic case of value being vastly different from cost.Anyone who already uses these isn't going to buy used ones.If they are too big to be supported by the free tools, then they are useless to hobbyists,and even if they are useable, they'd need an expensive multilayer PCB and good reflow process.Just stick the board on ebay as-is and see what happens.

author: NorthGuy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2019, 03:33:27 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on December 13, 2019, 09:31:53 amActually, if I was working on a board which uses exact same part and had some PCB printed, I would give these a try.

author: dagema
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2019, 11:58:12 pm
content: I got a license for Vivado for free when I bought an Arty from Digilent. I also later bought a Vivado license from Digilent for USD 50.

author: memset
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2021, 12:59:57 pm
content: Pretty old topic, but I'd like to reply, just for historical reasons.These boards seem to be a part of Qualcomm's custom ASIC emulator called Rumi. There are some "RUMI4, Firetail" markings on these boards. So, these boards may be coming from FPGA-emulation machines of their server-targeted ARM processor codenamed Firetail.Dunno why all the boards have their central chip removed. Maybe it was the only surviving chip, and they removed it prior to throwing away these damaged boards.Also, I've seen some parts of their earlier (and pretty complex) Rumi3 machine featuring a mix of Virtex-5 and Virtex-6 FPGAs. Rumi3 was made for FPGA emulation of some mobile chipset.Too bad, all that high-end stuff rarely gets spotted by any public reviewers or bloggers.

author: mac.6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 13, 2021, 07:02:18 pm
content: FPGA emulation is pretty common, but in my company we tend to switch to Synopsys HAPS fpga server or Zebu emulation machines.So I have a heap of fpga boards gathering dust (mostly altera, some Xilinx). Most unusable since they require licenses.

author: rzsn
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 06, 2023, 06:18:52 pm
content: So are these boards for sale, I would be interested!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2023, 08:47:12 pm
content: The OP was last active here 3.5 years ago so even if the boards are still in their possession it's unlikely they will ever see your message.