Mesa and Efinix FPGAs

Is Mesa sticking with the Efinix Trion FPGA's moving forward? I'd assume Spartan 6's are becoming unobtanium being that theyre a bit long in the tooth and there's a chip thing going on these days. I picked up a 7i96S for a final rewire of a development machine and was a bit surprised that it had an FPGA change. There wasn't alot of info on the forum when I ordered it.

For the time being I shoved the old 7i96 back into the box to get it going. I'm stuck on 2.8 for Py2/GTK2 dependencies for the moment but it looks like JT laid out the 2.8 dev setup to get the 7i76S going pretty straight forward. I suppose my concern is for anything I might make more than one of using a Mesa card I'd probably hold out for the Efinix version of the card. Otherwise it doesn't really make a difference.

You can use the 2.8.4 release which has 7I96S support

We had originally planned to migrate to Artix/SP7 but that's
probably out the window because of crazy price increases.

We will probably stay with Efinix for a while with Lattice being
a possible alternative.

So to an OEM that used Mesa hardware and used a 7i96S is that a safe bet or not to keep rolling with? Like is the 7i96S with an Efinix gonna stick around for a while regardless of whether you move to Latyice for other cards?

We will not change FPGAs on an existing
card unless there is an availability issue.

Also the FPGA type can be transparent to LinuxCNC

For example, we have a 7I92 replacement with a Trion chip
and it look totally the same to LinuxCNC

(but of course needs different bitfiles)

So this is mostly because the 7i96S is actually considered a different card and the 7i96 was discontinued, not just the FPGA?

Bitfiles are firmware so that doesn't impede just simply throwing one in a cabinet and going on about your day if the hal pins are still the same name. The concern is mostly about the LCNC upgrade requirement and the HAL changes that are necessary for a "machine in the field" scenario. Is that the case with a 7i92 that only got an FPGA swap?

Yes, the 7I96S is enough of a different card that the hm2_eth
driver gives it another name. The 7I92T is basically identical
to the 7I92 (and even old (2.7) drivers see it as a 7I92) though
its actual card name is 7I92T

Once the 7I96S was supported (2.9 and 2.8.4) the only required
configuration change is 1 letter on the ini file (7i96 changed to 7i96s)

I haven't done it yet, I probably should before I comment more but I thought outputs 4 and 5 were not called "ssr" on hm2 anymore? I saw something in a post about the outputs being changed in HAL. I know what the difference is hardware wise and that doesn't matter in my case.

Yep I forgot the names of outputs 4 and 5 changed
(eventually hm2 should have the capability of having
aliases for most I/O)

PCW, will the future 7i76e's be getting the same FPGA treatment?

Yes, plus some other updates:

The new output drivers will be push pull so can be sourcing,
sinking or both ( software selectable and not need flyback diodes
regardless of load)

Input thresholds will be settable or auto.