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.