In a previous post I got into the subject of CPLDs going obsolete. Hey folks, what ever happened to standardization with logic anyway? Remember
7400 series, 16V8's, and 22V10's ? Those were logic standards with multi-source vendors and common pinouts. Why is it still necessary for every CPLD vendor on the planet to put out all proprietary families? Why does standardization not apply to CPLDs?I can buy the argument that once upon a time the stuff was cutting edge with different vendors doing things very differently. But I don't see that anymore. Almost all the familes have ISP, nearly all of them have one or more lines with very similar capabilities to other vendor lines, they nearly all offer the same set of macro cell and package options, and the new familes are all going full CMOS with zero static power. They seem to be converging in everyway - except for the pinouts.
I think the vendors themselves would benefit greatly from getting together and writing a common standard for a base line family from 32-512 cells with identical pinouts. God knows we poor OEM designers would love to see it. They could still do their special lines as well, but having at least one common CPLD industry standard would eliminate many headaches and board revs for everyone.
The vendors probably once believed that they would see better pricing with proprietary lines. But I don't think it makes any difference. They still have to compete aggressively against each other with pricing now, and they often compete very aggressively. The feature/capability differences may have been significant once upon a time, but today most of the capabilities are common to all of the mainstream familes. Standards benefit everyone.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Chris.