An Efinix FPGA is a low-power programmable logic device built on the company’s Quantum compute fabric, sold across three families — Trion (40 nm), Topaz (16 nm, high-volume), and Titanium (16 nm, high-performance) — with densities from roughly 4,000 to about 2 million logic elements. You buy Efinix FPGAs through authorized distributors like DigiKey and Mouser for prototypes, or source them directly (or through an assembly partner) for production. This guide compares the series, lists real pricing, and shows how to get parts and quotes without stalling your schedule.
Key takeaways
- Three families: Trion (cost / low power, 40 nm), Topaz (mainstream volume, 16 nm), and Titanium (high-performance edge AI, 16 nm) — plus the new Titanium Edge line announced in June 2026 for the most demanding edge-AI workloads.
- Densities span about 4K to 2M logic elements; packages run from a 3.5 × 3.4 mm WLCSP up to large FineLine BGAs.
- Real pricing: entry Trion silicon is roughly $7–$20 each in small quantities; development kits run from $75 (Xyloni) to $450 (Titanium Ti375).
- The Efinity design tool is free across the entire portfolio — no node-locked or feature-gated license tiers.
- For BGA parts, budget for via-in-pad, controlled impedance, and a stack-up that supports MIPI, LVDS, and SerDes before you lock a package.
What Is an Efinix FPGA and How the Quantum Fabric Works
Efinix is a programmable-logic company (founded 2012, based in Santa Clara / Cupertino, California) whose FPGAs are built on an architecture it calls the Quantum fabric. A conventional FPGA divides its silicon into fixed logic blocks (LUTs and CLBs) and a separate pool of routing. Because the routing has to cover a worst-case design, vendors over-provision it — and most real designs leave a chunk of that silicon idle.
Efinix takes a different route. The Quantum fabric is a sea of identical tiles called XLR (eXchangeable Logic and Routing) cells, and the Efinity place-and-route tool decides, cell by cell, whether each one behaves as logic or as routing. If your design is logic-heavy, more cells become logic; if it is routing-intensive, more become interconnect.
Here’s the non-obvious part: because a cell can flip roles, you aren’t paying silicon, power, or cost for routing you never use. That dynamic allocation is how Efinix claims a roughly 4X power-performance-area advantage over traditional FPGA fabrics, and why the same logic often fits in a smaller, cheaper package than you’d expect from the logic-element count alone.
Most devices also pair the fabric with a RISC-V processor — the Sapphire SoC as soft IP on nearly the whole line, and a hardened quad-core block on higher-end Titanium parts. That turns an Efinix FPGA into a small compute system rather than just glue logic. A practical first step: install the free Efinity IDE and open the device selector to see resource counts, hardened blocks, and I/O per package before you commit to anything.
Efinix FPGA Series Compared: Trion, Topaz, and Titanium
The three families share the Quantum architecture and one toolchain, but they target different points on the cost-performance curve. Trion is the original, cost-optimized 40 nm generation. Topaz and Titanium are both 16 nm (TSMC): Topaz strips the feature set down for mainstream, high-volume production, while Titanium pushes for peak performance — more logic, faster SerDes, PCIe Gen4, and edge-AI compute.
| Family | Process node | Logic elements | Key hardened IP | Best for | Common packages |
| Trion | 40 nm low-power | ~4K–120K | MIPI CSI-2, DDR3/LPDDR3, optional on-chip SPI flash (some LQFP) | Cost-sensitive I/O, bridging, small vision | LQFP (T8/T13/T20), FineLine BGA |
| Topaz | 16 nm | multiple densities (e.g. Tz50–Tz170) | PCIe Gen3, MIPI D-PHY, LPDDR4, LVDS, hardened RISC-V, up to 12.5 Gbps transceivers (SKU-dependent) | Mainstream, high-volume production | FineLine BGA (e.g. 484-ball) |
| Titanium | 16 nm | 35K–~2M | PCIe Gen4, LPDDR4/4x, 10GbE, MIPI, quad-core RISC-V (>1 GHz), up to 16 Gbps SerDes (device-dependent) | Edge AI, compute acceleration, high-performance vision | FineLine BGA down to WLCSP 3.5 × 3.4 mm |
A few things the spec sheet won’t tell you at a glance. Topaz and Titanium share the 16 nm node and enough tool and pin compatibility that you can prototype on Topaz and migrate up to Titanium when a design needs more headroom. A Titanium device draws roughly a third of the power of an equivalent Trion part and fits in about a quarter of the die area — the payoff of the newer process plus the compute-oriented fabric. And the tooling is genuinely free: unlike some competitors that gate features or lock the free tier to specific devices, Efinity’s no-cost license covers the whole portfolio, including the Sapphire RISC-V SoC IP.
The trade-off worth internalizing: the small Trion LQFP parts (T8, T13, T20) route on four layers and keep BOM and assembly simple, but they top out at modest density and clock speed. Titanium BGAs hand you SerDes and huge logic, but they demand fine-pitch fanout and more PCB layers — cost you’ll pay on the board, not the chip.
Full Efinix FPGA Device List by Family
This is a representative map of the line, not an exhaustive part-number list. Exact resources, I/O, and hardened-block availability change by package, so confirm against the current Efinix selector guide before you fix a footprint.
| Device | Family | ~Logic elements | Notable | Typical packages |
| T4 / T8 | Trion | 4K / 8K | Minimalist, very low power, control-plane duty | LQFP144, BGA81, WLCSP |
| T13 / T20 | Trion | 13K / 20K | Dual MIPI CSI-2, DDR; both AEC-Q100 Grade 2 | LQFP100, BGA169/256/324 |
| T35 / T55 / T85 / T120 | Trion | 35K–120K | DDR3/LPDDR3, MIPI, RISC-V-capable | FineLine BGA |
| Tz50 / Tz75 / Tz100 / Tz170 | Topaz | ~50K–170K class | PCIe Gen3, LPDDR4, hardened RISC-V | FineLine BGA (e.g. 484-ball) |
| Ti35 / Ti60 / Ti90 / Ti120 / Ti180 | Titanium | 35K–180K | MIPI D-PHY, LPDDR4, flexible HSIO | FineLine BGA, small footprints |
| Ti375 | Titanium | 375K | Quad-core RISC-V >1 GHz, PCIe Gen4, 16 Gbps SerDes, AEC-Q100 Grade 1 | C529 FineLine BGA |
| Ti85 … Ti2000 (transceiver line) | Titanium | up to ~2M | High density plus SerDes for compute and comms | Large FineLine BGA |
Efinix FPGA Price: Device and Dev-Kit Costs
Efinix FPGA price has two layers: the silicon and the ecosystem. Small-quantity distributor pricing gives a useful baseline for budgeting, but volume is always by quote. The figures below are DigiKey small-quantity list prices captured in 2026 — treat them as directional, since catalog pricing and stock move.
Efinix FPGA silicon — small-quantity list (DigiKey, 2026)
| Orderable part | Description | Unit price (small qty) |
| T8F81 / T8 LQFP144 | Trion T8, entry device | ~$7.17 |
| T13Q100F3I4 | Trion T13, 100-QFP with flash, industrial | ~$10.19 |
| T20Q100F3C3 | Trion T20, 100-QFP with flash, commercial | ~$9.36 |
| T20F256C4 | Trion T20, 256 FineLine BGA, commercial | ~$11.60 |
| T20F256I4 | Trion T20, 256 FineLine BGA, industrial | ~$17.83 |
| T20F324C3 | Trion T20, 324 FineLine BGA, commercial | ~$19.34 |
Efinix development kits (DigiKey, 2026)
| Kit | FPGA / family | Price |
| Xyloni | Trion T8 (F81) | $75 |
| T20F256C-DK | Trion T20 (F256) | $150 |
| T20MIPI-DK | Trion T20 MIPI (F169) | $150 |
| T120F324C-DK | Trion T120 (F324) | $375 |
| T120F576C-DK | Trion T120 (F576) | $440 |
| TZ170J484C-DK | Topaz Tz170 (J484) | $400 |
| TI60F225C-DK | Titanium Ti60 (F225) | ~$360–375 |
| TI375C529C-DK | Titanium Ti375 (C529) | $450 |
What moves the number? Density, I/O count, speed grade, and temperature grade. The suffix tells the story: a part ending in C is commercial, I is industrial — and the same die costs more in the industrial grade. Notice the T20F256 jumping from about $11.60 commercial to about $17.83 industrial for identical logic. Higher-density Titanium BGAs (Ti180, Ti375 and up) sit well above the Trion range and are priced by volume, so a one-piece web price on those tells you almost nothing about your real cost.
The counterintuitive cost lever is the board, not the chip. A $12 Trion in a 0.5 mm BGA can force via-in-pad, filled and capped microvias, and two extra PCB layers versus an LQFP part — and that board-plus-assembly delta can exceed the difference in chip price. Sometimes the larger-pitch, nominally ‘more expensive’ package is the cheaper choice at the system level. Price the finished assembly, not the line item.
Do-Monday: get a quote at your real annual volume and correct temperature grade instead of anchoring on the single-unit catalog price.
How to Buy Efinix FPGAs: Distributors, Suppliers, and Lead Times
Where you buy Efinix FPGAs depends on where you are in the design cycle. Three channels cover almost every case.
- Prototyping and low volume — authorized catalog distributors. DigiKey, Mouser, and Future Electronics stock Trion, Topaz, and Titanium devices, development kits, and programming cables, usually with same-day shipping on in-stock lines. This is the fastest path to samples and first boards.
- Regional and value-added distribution. WPG Americas and Braemac (Americas and Southeast Asia) and ViMOS (Europe) add design-in support and volume logistics on top of catalog stock — useful once a design is moving toward production.
- Direct and production. For a design win at volume, work with Efinix or a franchised partner on scheduled orders, tiered pricing, and lifecycle support. Efinix commits to supplying its current families until at least 2045, which is the kind of longevity industrial and automotive programs need.
A word on lead times. Because Efinix uses standard CMOS nodes — 16 nm at TSMC for Topaz and Titanium, a mature 40 nm process for Trion — rather than exotic manufacturing steps, lead times have generally been shorter and more predictable than some larger FPGA vendors during allocation. That is a real sourcing advantage, but it isn’t a guarantee: carry buffer stock on BGA and Titanium parts, and always confirm the full orderable part number. Density, package, speed grade, and temperature grade all change the SKU and the price.
If you’re also building the board, you can collapse two problems into one purchase order. Rather than buying the FPGA on one channel and contracting the PCB fabrication and assembly separately, hand a single partner your BOM and Gerbers: the device gets sourced, the stack-up gets built to your impedance targets, and the fine-pitch BGA gets assembled and inspected as one finished, tested unit. For a turnkey build, that removes the seams where schedule and accountability usually slip — one team owns parts, board, and assembly.
Note on channel: the authorized franchise distributors for Efinix are the named catalog and regional partners above. A contract manufacturer or sourcing partner (including FPGA.IO) procures through those channels and builds the device into your assembly; it isn’t a substitute for Efinix’s own franchised distribution, and for pure chip supply at volume you may still transact through a franchised distributor or Efinix directly.
Designing and Assembling PCBs for Efinix BGA FPGAs
The Efinix datasheet gets you a working design; the board is where projects actually stumble. Topaz and Titanium ship in FineLine BGAs with 0.5–0.8 mm ball pitch, and that pitch dictates most of your DFM decisions.
Fanout. At 0.8 mm pitch you can usually dog-bone escape on conventional technology. At 0.65 mm and below, you’ll typically need via-in-pad — laser-drilled microvias, filled and capped (plated over) — to escape the inner rows cleanly. Decide this at footprint and schematic time, because retrofitting via-in-pad after layout usually means a respin.
Stack-up and impedance. MIPI D-PHY, LVDS, and SerDes lanes are controlled-impedance nets: commonly 100 Ω differential (85 Ω for some PCIe/SerDes) and 50 Ω single-ended. Put the target and the tolerance in the fab notes and give the fab a defined stack-up — don’t leave ‘controlled impedance’ as a bare phrase. A general design holds ±10% per IPC-6012 Class 2/3; tighten to ±5–7% for multi-gigabit SerDes. A Ti375’s 16 Gbps lanes will not tolerate a guessed dielectric.
Power and return path. Efinix cores run low — on the order of 0.85–1.1 V core rails with 1.2/1.8/2.5/3.3 V I/O banks — and entry Trion parts draw sub-milliamp core leakage, which is why they suit always-on designs. Use the Efinix power calculator to size rails, then design decoupling per rail and keep the return path continuous under every high-speed net. A broken reference under a diff pair is a classic source of intermittent link failures.
Finish, class, and inspection. ENIG is the safe surface finish for fine-pitch BGA coplanarity. Build the bare board to IPC-6012 Class 2 for general product or Class 3 for automotive and medical, and hold assembly to IPC-A-610 (Class 2 or 3) with J-STD-001 soldering. Because you can’t inspect BGA joints optically, X-ray the array for voiding, bridging, and head-in-pillow. Watch drilled-hole aspect ratio too — high layer counts with small vias push it past reliable plating (keep through-hole aspect ratio in the ~8:1–10:1 range, or move to stacked microvias).
A real example. A machine-vision builder brought us a Titanium board that passed AOI but dropped a MIPI camera link intermittently in the field. The FPGA was fine. The cause was an inner layer where the differential pairs had drifted to about 85 Ω against a 100 Ω target after a late stack-up swap that nobody re-checked. Rebuilding the stack-up to hold 100 Ω ±8% and verifying with a TDR cleared the field returns. The lesson: freeze the stack-up and impedance targets before layout, and re-verify after any material change.
Do-Monday: lock your stack-up and impedance targets before you route, and add a via-in-pad plan to any BGA at 0.8 mm pitch or tighter.
Common Mistakes When Sourcing and Designing With Efinix FPGAs
Send this list to a junior engineer before their first Efinix design-in.
- Ordering the wrong suffix. A base device like “T20” isn’t orderable — density, package, speed grade, and temperature grade (C vs I) all change the part number and the price. Confirm the full PN before you buy or quote.
- Ignoring SiP variants. Some Ti35, Ti60, and Ti135 parts ship as system-in-package with SPI flash and/or LPDDR4 integrated. Choosing the plain FPGA when you needed the SiP (or the reverse) changes your BOM and your layout.
- No via-in-pad plan for fine-pitch BGA. Assuming you can dog-bone a 0.5 mm BGA is a fast route to a respin. Pick the escape strategy — and tell your fab — up front.
- Under-specifying impedance. “Controlled impedance” with no target or tolerance means the fab guesses. State 50 Ω / 100 Ω and the tolerance for every high-speed net class.
- Forgetting configuration. Trion parts without integrated flash need an external configuration device or the mask option. Leave it off the schematic and you get a board that won’t boot.
- Mismatching family to need. Topaz is tuned for mainstream volume; Titanium for peak performance and SerDes. Speccing Titanium where Topaz fits inflates cost; the reverse starves you of I/O or compute.
- Skipping the automotive-grade check. Only certain parts are AEC-Q100 qualified (Ti375 at Grade 1; T13 and T20 at Grade 2). Don’t build an automotive product around a non-qualified SKU.
- Single-sourcing with no buffer. Even with good lead times, carry buffer stock on BGA and Titanium lines and validate a second orderable configuration wherever you can.
Frequently Asked Questions About Efinix FPGAs
Is Efinix a good alternative to Xilinx (AMD) or Altera (Intel)?
For low-power edge, vision, and mid-density logic, yes. The Quantum fabric targets power-performance-area efficiency in small packages, and Efinity is free across the line. Efinix doesn’t chase the very largest data-center FPGAs, but for edge AI, bridging, and volume products it’s a credible — and often cheaper — option.
Are Efinix FPGAs in stock and easy to get?
Common Trion, Topaz, and Titanium devices and dev kits are stocked at DigiKey, Mouser, and Future Electronics, usually shipping same day when in stock. Higher-density Titanium parts and large volumes go through quotes or franchised distributors, so confirm the exact part number and lead time before you commit.
How much does an Efinix FPGA cost?
Entry Trion devices run roughly $7–$20 each in small quantities; higher-density Titanium BGAs cost substantially more and are priced by volume quote. Development kits range from about $75 for the Xyloni board to $450 for the Titanium Ti375 kit. For production numbers, always get a volume quote at your temperature grade.
What software do Efinix FPGAs use, and is it free?
Efinix devices use the Efinity IDE — a complete RTL-to-bitstream flow with synthesis, place-and-route, and timing analysis. Efinix offers free licenses covering the entire device portfolio, including the Sapphire RISC-V SoC IP, rather than gating features behind paid or node-locked tiers.
Do Efinix FPGAs support RISC-V?
Yes. Efinix provides the Sapphire RISC-V SoC as soft IP on most devices, and higher-end Titanium parts such as the Ti375 include a hardened quad-core 32-bit RISC-V block running over 1 GHz. That lets a single device act as both programmable logic and an embedded processor subsystem.
What’s the difference between Trion, Topaz, and Titanium?
Trion is the 40 nm, low-cost, low-power first generation. Topaz and Titanium are both 16 nm: Topaz targets mainstream, high-volume designs with a streamlined feature set, while Titanium targets peak performance — more logic, faster SerDes, PCIe Gen4, and edge-AI compute. You can migrate a design from Topaz up to Titanium.
Are Efinix FPGAs automotive qualified?
Some are. The Titanium Ti375 is AEC-Q100 Grade 1, and the Trion T13 and T20 are AEC-Q100 Grade 2. Efinix’s Efinity tools are ISO 26262 certified and support designs up to ASIL-D. Always confirm a specific part’s qualification before an automotive design-in.
Where can I buy Efinix FPGAs for volume production?
Through authorized distributors (DigiKey, Mouser, Future Electronics), regional value-added partners (WPG Americas, Braemac, ViMOS), or directly with Efinix for design wins. If you’re also fabricating the board, an assembly partner can source the device and build it into a finished, tested assembly under one order. See the Efinix products and distributor page for the current selector guide and franchised-distributor list.
From Efinix FPGA Prototype to Production
Efinix’s three families give you a clean path from a $75 Xyloni experiment to a Titanium volume design without changing tools or vendor. The hard part is rarely the chip — it’s the BGA fanout, the impedance-controlled stack-up, and getting devices on a predictable schedule. Nail those early and the rest tends to follow.
Send your BOM and Gerbers for a combined Efinix sourcing and DFM review, and we’ll quote the parts, the stack-up, and the assembled board together.
