Embedded processor selection for long-life product

Bingo. That can be _very_ problematic.

Jon

Reply to
Jonathan Kirwan
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With that kind of period, I would suggest standardizing a board level mechanical and electrical interfaces specification and be prepared to redesign the board 2-3 times during that period, so that any boards from any generation can be freely mixed.

While some designs have been in production for more than two decades with little changes, for instance the RoHS directive may cause problems if semiconductor manufacturers are not willing to create lead-free versions of some very old design. Although the RoHS directive has some allowance for leaded replacement part, the demand may drop quite fast, causing the end of life for a specific product.

Also the availability of lead-through components may drop, since most use surface mount components these days.

This development would have been hard to predict 20 years ago, so do we expect to be able to give better prediction now about what will happen during the next 20 years ?

Making a board level mechanical/electrical design allows much more flexibility in implementing what is on the board at a specific decade.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen

Dude! The OP said "decades". I'm thinking 1982 compared to today; today compared to 2035. Ciarcia was still writing for Byte magazine back then. Around that time, he was espousing programmable logic for hobbyists; I wrote him off for many years, stopped reading his columns, as being a little too radical. :)

(Thanks for the links.)

Mike.

Reply to
MikeWhy

This is just my opinion of course, but have you considered that although someone is asking for 20 to 40 year product life (btw 20 to

40 years is not spec, they need to decide if 20 is good enough or if they really need 40) is that really a useful target. Usually a long life time for a product is desired when the development requires a lot of testing or there is some other high expense associated with changing the product.

I don't think there are many apps that have a higher development expense than space equipment. The shuttle has been around for about

25 years. The computers have been replaced and I expect there is virtually no digital electronics that hasn't been redesigned other than possibly SSI/MSI type stuff which will virtually never go away.

So does your application *really* warrant a 40 year product lifetime? Even if you go with PC/104 boards, do you really think this bus will still be around in even just 20 years? I don't.

Looking at your stated requirements realistically, I think that 20 years is a very outside possibility for a product lifetime. Of the solutions offered so far, I don't see any that can make it likely that the entire unit won't have to be redesigned and recoded at least once in 20 years. Try to get any manufacturer to state they will make a part for even 5 years... I have asked and they won't do it. So what do you think the chances are that they will make it for more than 10 years much less 20? If you count on there being PC/104 boards COTS in

10 more years, I think you may get a surprise. Again, I just can't see PC/104 being around in 20 years. Heck, I'm not even sure the PC will be around in 20 years. Computing is just changing too fast. I expect that in 10 years the desktop PC will be an antique and they will all be about the size of today's routers, most likely built into the monitor. Items like PC/104 boards will have changed to either a much smaller form factor for lower end devices or will have much faster interfaces for higher end embedded, much like the PC/104+ uses PCI.

I guess it is a lot more fun to work the problem and try to come up with something that has a chance of making the 20 year mark. But I think realistically your company (or the end user) would be better served by acknowledging that it will be hard to make 10 years and 20 is very unlikely and planning accordingly.

Am I being overly pessimistic?

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Looking at ST's website, under "Automotive 32 Bit Controllers" interesting to note they do NOT list their Cortex M3, but they DO list the PowerPC offerings, a joint sourcing venture with Freescale. These have ECC in Flash and RAM, and protected memory - and 5V operation.

5V operation is one standardisation that is coming back :)

After a few years when the IC vendors tried telling their customers to keep finding new and many ever-lower voltages, they finally got enough skills in the fab, to give customers what they always wanted : ONE supply rail, with good noise immunity, and analog dynamic range.

Seems second sourcing is coming back too... :)

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Z80 is still available, and so is 68HC11. Those parts have good chance to be in production until 2035, too :)

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

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Reply to
Vladimir Vassilevsky

The Motorola/Freescale MC68332 has been in production since about 1990. I'm still using it in low-power data loggers. It's available in the DigiKey catalog for $22.65, qty 1. The 68K architecture goes back even further. Based on that longevity, I second Vladimir's recommendation of Freescale.

Mark Borgerson

Reply to
Mark Borgerson

In the industrial sector that I work most of the time, the typical contractual requirement is that the product should have at least a 10 year support period.

One of my customers are using a design that was made 20 years ago and they still tried to sell it (even if a replacement product has been available for a decade). I successfully tried to warn them that if such products are sold today, we still would have to support it for the next decade.

Fortunately that product version is no longer sold to new installations, but of course we have to support current installations with the original product or with the replacement product for the next decade.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen

A couple of articles in EPD magazine may be of interest:-

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Reply to
Paul E. Bennett

Think of life as sales life + service life and the outlook may be a little different. At one time a company I was working for was looking at developing a product with another company. One of the requirements was that there be service spares available for 20 years after the *end* of normal production.

That places a minimum availability requirement on components, unless you are willing to reserve resources for continuing engineering after the end of the sales life of the product the service parts are for.

What's the service life of a Boeing 747?

Robert

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Reply to
Robert Adsett

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 23:18:17 -0500, "MikeWhy" wrote in comp.arch.embedded:

I have a Z80 tool set that I first used over 20 years ago that ran on MS-DOS. I can run it on my DOS 6.22 VM today. Not quite 1982, I was still using Z80 tools on CP/M 80. But 1984, I think, we moved to Z80 tools on the PC. So about a year shy of the quarter century mark.

Still, that's 2.4 decades, definitely plural.

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Reply to
Jack Klein

... snip ...

And, with a few discrete macros, they work just fine for a 64180 (or Z180) etc. One of the advantages of the CLI.

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Reply to
CBFalconer

I was remarking on the Vista reference in your post. Some things survive the years better than others. Of course, Vista's teething problems today might well not even warrant a footnote in 20 years. Who can know such things?

Reply to
MikeWhy

One way to go would be to build your own chip. If the quantities you need are less than a few thousand per year, then a multi-project wafer would be the way to go.

This can work out as a surprisingly cost effective way to go. We made our own chip in 0.35um - not the state of the art but a good solid process (used extensively in the Auto industry) and the total cost came to less than 50K euros.

You need to make sure that you get the source code for the entire design as well as the source code for the entire toolchain (Compiler, linker, debugger, IDE etc etc).

You can then be in complete control.

A few processor IP companies will do this for you - one is Cortus

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I doubt that ARM and any of the market leaders will though.

I will add Micrium uC/OS-II to your list of RTOS's to which you get the complete source code.

Reply to
Michael Chapman

I wouldn't expect any ARM derivative to have anywhere near a lon lifespan. It's a licensed core with all kinds of peripherals glued aroun it. These processors don't seem to last long. I would lean towar Freescale (e.g. PowerPC). They carry their processor parts for a good lon while, they're technically as good or better than most an support/documentation is excellent. The company is also likely to b around, even if they change their name again (Moto Semi => Freescale = ?).

Jeff

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Reply to
JeffR

I have no idea why you say the ARM chips don't last a long time. There are ARM parts from Atmel that have been in production for over

10 years that I know of. I expect the time has been considerably longer as they were not new when I first looked at them.

Rick

Reply to
rickman

One solution - not the cheapest though - is to build your own chip using Soft IP core. (A more expensive solution is to buy the processor company!)

Make sure you go for one where you can get full source code for the cor and for all the compilers, linkers, assemblers, IDE's etc etc. And the make sure that the vendor is capable of training you in how everything i built and works. Make sure you can rebuild all the software tool yourself.

You then control everything. You can change foundaries, proces technologies and anything else.

You could look at

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who will do that kind of thing.

Reply to
Michael C

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