Spartan™-3E is the seventh family in the low-cost
Spartan FPGA series, specifically designed to meet
the needs of high volume, cost-sensitive consumer
electronic applications. The five-member family offers
densities ranging from 100,000 to 1.6 million system gates.
The Spartan-3E family builds on the success of the
Spartan-3 family by increasing the amount of logic per I/O,
significantly reducing the cost per logic cell.

New features improve system performance and reduce the cost of configuration. These Spartan-3E enhancements, combined with advanced 90 nm process technology, 300mm wafers and application-driven architecture choices, deliver more functionality and bandwidth per dollar than previously possible; setting new standards in the programmable logic industry. Because of their exceptionally low cost, Spartan-3E FPGAs are ideally suited to a wide range of consumer electronics applications, including broadband access, home networking, display/ projection, and digital television equipment.

Xilinx has extended the use of FPGAs into volumes and applications, allowing the Spartan-3E family to become a superior alternative to mask programmed ASICs. FPGAs avoid the high initial cost, the lengthy development cycles, and the inherent inflexibility of conventional ASICs. Also, FPGA programmability permits design upgrades in the field with no hardware replacement necessary, an impossibility with ASICs. The Spartan-3E reduces the price points of FPGAs to unprecedented levels; and Spartan-3E devices offer the lowest cost-per-logic (CPL) of any FPGA.