FPGA Price Surge: Design Challenges and Alternative Strategies
What Happened to FPGA Prices? Between 2020 and 2022, the semiconductor industry experienced what analysts called “chipflation” — a sustained, broad-based price increase driven by pandemic-related demand spikes, supply chain disruptions, and surging investment in AI and 5G infrastructure. FPGA manufacturers were not immune. AMD (Xilinx) and Intel (Altera) both cited rising TSMC wafer costs as justification for significant list-price increases — in some cases close to double the pre-pandemic price. Unlike commodity memory or microcontroller price spikes that eventually normalised, elevated FPGA prices have proven sticky. ...