CPLD/FPGA, software and 10 years support

I know others here have to deal with long life time support of designs, and I have one where I ahev to also supply the tools (free or paid) so that customer can support in at least 10 years time. The trouble is the design necessitates a PLD/CPLD/FPGA, so the requirements get quite onerous....

Device 100 registers min 50 I/O min Surface mount as TQFP/PQFP/PLCC (i.e. NOT BGA etc..) 5V I/O or tolerant I/O Fastest clock is currently 25MHz Less than 80mA total Icc (not all sections operating at same time) Flash or EEPROM programming (no RAM devices)

Spare parts to be held on shelf to cope with 10 years life.

Software tools Must support XP minimum Schematic capture entry (customer does not want VHDL as main source) Any generated files as TEXT, not encoded One time license (no recurring license renewal to use) NOT tied to a machine or disk drive Software must be available as disk or single file installation (NO web based installation process) Installation file(s) must take less than 400MB (as being stored as one of the items on 1GB flash drives for primary source of archive, other copies will exist) ISP software must work on any machine regardless of license status.

Now I have looked at various suppliers and so far discounted

Altera - Free and paid for software is continual licence renewal Tied to specific machine

Xilinx - Even free software is 970MB download and 380MB service pack which is about twice (or more) the size of XP installation and service packs. Have not had chance to examine file structure or machine tie-ins.

Lattice - not seen suitable device yet - not evaluated software.

I know this is a tight set of constraints, but others must get at least some of these problems. My main issue is that this is very small volume (10 maximum), but has to be covered by these constraints at least, others may suddenly be 'remembered'.

It seems that even the tools are becoming as throw away as the life cycle of the parts assuming developers are making this months mobile phone/laptop and then throw the tools away next month. Seems programmable logic is becoming something that cannot be used for long life time products. The drive for replacing with ever bigger devices mean anything designed last year may end up being redesigned due to EOL on products so quickly.

Looking for pointers and suggestions, even inspiration.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter
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The restriction on size is silly - just get a 2 GB flash drive.

Insisting on using schematic entry as the main design tool ensures that you have a limited set of developers, that the design is tied closely to a specific part from a specific supplier, and quite possibly that the design files are in a binary format instead of readable and easily archived text format. Anyone serious about long-term support and development should be insisting on either Verilog or VHDL.

I think, but I'm not sure, that the license renewals for Altera and Xilinx are for updates. As long as you are happy to stick to the version you have (and I think that's what you want here), a on-off license should be fine. Both A and X should have floating licenses, which are not tied to a specific machine, but I haven't look at that in detail. Your distributors should be able to give you advice here.

If you want to value long term availability of the software above all else, you should be looking at open source tools. That's the only way you can be sure of availability of the tools in the future, and compatibility with operating systems and pc's in the future. You should therefore be considering Icarus, possibly combined with other tools such as MyHDL. I'm not saying these are necessarily the best solutions for your customer, but it is the only way to be sure that you can run exactly the same design software in the future on any computer. Unfortunately, you can't avoid using at least some software from your PLD supplier.

And note that XP will probably not be available in 10 years time, and there's a realistic chance that whatever version of windows is available then will have trouble with XP-compatible versions of software dealing with hardware (i.e., ISP devices) or licensing software. Even if you want to use windows for development now, check for linux versions of the tools as a backup plan.

Reply to
David Brown

XC95108 should cover all.

Should not be a problem.

Win 98/2000

As stated from another post, wrong decision.

License free webpack.

200MB single installation file. Don't use any updates.
600MB installed. Can strip it down manually by removing all the FPGA stuffs. In fact, I am thinking about rebuilding a installation file after stripping all the junks and outdated xilinx ads. I don't need to be remind of the new cool series of cool runners.

Use older version, such as ise4. It will do everything you need for CPLD.

Reply to
linnix

Consider the market the customer is in respecifying that part which has been agreed upon is going to be a costly exercise adding at least 3 months to project.

The intention is to have paper AND also have PDF versions of schematics stored as well. Which means any changes have to be re-entered in a possibly new package. Text files is meant for generated files from compilation VHDL, mappings, optimised equations and the like. Schematic is not expected to be text file.

Actually having schematic entry as main route may well extend the design cycle anyway.

I know that, but customer has been bitten on a couple of jobs with VHDL and has gone anti-VHDL, when in fact it was the designer at fault.

The Altera licenses that are supposedly floating are for multiple seat licenses when I last looked.

I know that, but customer wants to host Visual basic application and data files stored on the flash drive so that discounts DOS or Linux type solutions.

Mind you I have known some linux applications not always be runnable later because they assume either a specific flavour of linux or specific library version and fail on newer versions. You cannot always find out all those details immediately as the folks don't always tell you.

I know it was stated as 'min' requirement, considering Vista is slated out soon(ish). There are lots of Win 98 systems around today, and I still see people who have Win 95, even in large organisations.

Currently my aim is to give them what they ask for having pointed out the pitfalls. Other criteria dictate other long term solutions not being possible.

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Paul Carpenter

The floating license is still locked to the license server, so while you have the ability to run the software on any machine that can connect to that server, you still have to maintain the server. I suppose you could keep the same Ethernet card as you upgrade servers ...

Right, the fitter tools are vendor-specific and change regularly, so relying on open-source doesn't help.

-a

Reply to
Andy Peters

That was my view of the parts from Xilinx.

Wonder what issues with XP and Vista will be, as unfortunately the host is not being tied down.

I know not mine, but a written in stone one from customer. One day I will have to do a page on 'written in stone' along with 'the bit of the spec that you must comply with that we forgot to tell you'.

That's the sort of help that means something could become useable.

Thanks. I wish they did not try to do you must download support for everything just in case you might need it, there must be better ways of distributing PLD/FPGA software so you can get the language files you want and the chip support you want.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Reply to
Paul Carpenter

That kills _almost_ all candidates right there.... :)

You should look at Atmel's ATF1508ASL (Meets all device targets), and WinCUPL design flow (meets all SW targets).

Stable, well under 400MB (

Reply to
Jim Granville

The normal version of Altera Quartus doesn't require a recurring license. It comes with a dongle and is valid forever. The last price I heard was 2k$

Rene

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Reply to
Rene Tschaggelar

Hi Paul,

Not sure if anybody mentioned it but I would also have a look Actel (e.g. APA/A3E devices). Because they support military/avionics their devices are not EOL'd so quickly, also some of their largest devices are available in PQ240.

Just a thought,

Hans.

formatting link

Reply to
Hans

Have not try this on XP. No need or desire to do so. I always keep old copies of OS and tools anyway. Ten years from now. I don't need to run the latest OS with 15 years old tools and 20 years old chips (XC95XX).

Reply to
linnix

Well it looks like some of the devices could do the job, but my quick look and the software seems a minefield of different applications and no real software overview (or even where it get device specific). Seeing thrid party support tools with Cadence and Mentor, gets scary on a very low production run ...

Appreciated and looking at everyone's suggestions as a broad search helps especially when I might not have experience of some vendors' tools, or best ways to obtain them.

..

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter

I wish I could lock down the OS as well. That is beyond my scope on this job.

Sometimes gets to be a pain when you have to replace system hardware and revert to some VGA mode display due to lack of drivers..

I would rather have locked down systems.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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Paul Carpenter

If you expect to be able to use something after 10 years or more, you really have to archive also the whole toolchain, including the OS. Anything requiring activation would be out of the question. WinXP would be out of the question due to this, I don't know about WinXP embedded. Win2000 does not need activation, neither does Linux. Thus you should make a bootable CD containing the OS, toolchain and application data.

Then there is a question how long the CD-R/RW is readable, it might be a good idea to also store the disk image on some other media, such as some common type of flash.

If only one copy is needed, archiving the hardware would not be that bad idea. A small size PC with Ethernet interface should do. The problem is how long the components will remain intact (especially electrolytic capacitors).

Also the display, keyboard or mouse availability in the future might be an issue, so storing these might be an option. If these are not stored, some telnet+VNC system should be set up to be used remotely through Ethernet.

If the hardware can not be archived, then there is the problem of guessing what hardware is available in the future. It might be quite safe to guess that x86 machines would be available in the future, at least as old systems stored in a cupboard.

For new hardware the problem is the availability of interface cards and what buses are available. At least some well known PCI/PCI-E Ethernet card should be available, but the system should boot without display card or keyboard/mouse.

If the frozen system is built around Virtual86/386 mode, it should also be checked that it will work under AMD 64 bit machines, which might be common in the future.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen

Another idea is to check if the toolkit and OS can work under virtualising software like VMWare. Then you could archive the entire OS

  • software image, and re-use it on other PC's later. It doesn't matter if the software is locked to a specific MAC address, since the "ethernet" card is virtual, and the MAC address (I expect) follows the image. Even better, if you can get it working under bochs or qemu, then you don't even need to have a x86 compatible machine in the future to run it.
Reply to
David Brown

I've tried an Atmel WinCUPL Flash drive install/Run, with these results:

Yes, it all works fine.

Compile times: Slightly slower. Takes appx 2 seconds for Compile/Sim/JED create, from Flash drive. ~266K project directory

ZIPed sized : Functional Editor : 533K Functional WinCUPL\Shared : 3.17MB ( under 1% of OP's 400MB target )

Unzipped sizes: Text Editor: 1.4MB WinCupl : 8.21MB

So, a target of _operate_ from FLASH drive looks quite do-able and that has to give more design-longevity, as then you only have to find a machine with a USB port to quickly try it. So your pool of candidates is suddenly much larger. Probably be good for 20+ years of design life ?

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

The XC95108 looks like it will exceed the 80mA spec. CoolRunner XPLA3 has 5V tolerant IO and is lower current. I had a brief look at coolrunner II, but it doesn't look like it had the 5V tolerant I/O.

Although quite a lot of hardware engineers don't know vhdl, or use it so infrequently it's more productive to use schematic capture, with logic symbols that all hardware engineers understand.

Of course there are disadvantages, one that I have come across more than once is that a hardware engineer may consider all nets on the schematic to have propagation delays similar to wired board, when in fact they don't. Some attention needs to be paid to synchronous design issues. A recent thread on comp.arch.fpga, titled along the lines of 'spectre of metastability', touched on this.

Regards,

Paul.

Reply to
Paul Taylor

How exactly does "Buy a bigger flash drive for anouther $20 or so" add 3 months to a project?

Reply to
Mike Harrison

2000 would be a better archived OS than XP due to lack of the product activation nonsense.
Reply to
Mike Harrison

Atmel's ATF1508ASL ?

IF they can load it ! - given the OPs desire for a long design-life, one simple litmus test, is to look back ten+ years, and try and find both a Trained Engineer and Design that can load any of those 10 year old SCH designs into todays tools, or find a 10 year old SCH+license that works on todays PCs.

Ask a sample of HW Engineers if they can understand this code snippet :

PIN 38 = RegQ0; PIN 34 = RegQ1;

RegQ0.ck = OscBN; RegQ1.ck = OscBN;

RegQ0.t = 'b'1; RegQ1.t = RegQ0;

No, it is not VHDL - for CPLDs that's not really required.

In modern FPGAs, routing delays now dominate, so there is a grain of truth in this.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Thanks for the information, keeping options open, is what I am trying to do with so many other constraints.

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