CPLDs

[shuo_shuo]

Hi, all

I have some very old cards, which are designed based on XC9572 and XC95108. And I'll continue to use them in the future.

But now, they goes out of production, and Xilinx won't produced them any more.

I want to replace XC9572 and XC95108, could you give me some comments?

By what kind of plan, after replace or redesign these cards, in the next 10 years, I won't redo it once more?

Thanks.

Chris

[austin · Accepted solution]

Chris,

That is tough:  ten years?

Perhaps the best you can do is to redesign into the newest CPLD you can find, using verilog or VHDL as the source code.

Then, in the future, you can re-target the source code to another CPLD.  The product life-cycles on many products is getting quite short.  It is very hard to find a fabrication facility that is making any older process parts.  Some technology nodes which were pretty popular have ceased production.  CPLD's are especially vulnerable, as they are so inexpensive (as compared to more complex, and more profitable parts).

For the least disruption, you could move to the 9500XL (3.3v part), but even this part is very old, and is definitely not guaranteed to be around in another ten years.  Coolrunner II is the latest offering from Xilinx, and is considered a "new" CPLD.

[shuo_shuo]

Austin, thanks for your advice.

All we can say is that the technology has been developping so fast.

For a company like mine, there are always some engineers keep redesigning different circuit.

I'll redesign the circuit based on Coolrunner, and some years later other guys will redesign it again with other newer parts.

..........

Chris