Re: New project...PCI based servo control board

[Jon Elson <elson-at-pico-systems.com>]

John Sheahan wrote:

>On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 09:55:41PM -0500, Craig Edwards wrote:
>  
>
>>Agreed.  With regard to long term availability we need to make sure the FPGA
>>is built on a mainstream process that will be in high volume production for
>>a long time.  Also, I prefer a non-volatile architecture, i.e. one which
>>doesn't require a boot process during power up, but there is a cost
>>trade-off with regard to SRAM based FPGAs. 
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I think you will be doing really well to get more than perhaps 5 years
>availability from any fpga today.   There are no mainstream, long-life 
>processes any more.  Eg go back 8-10 years to the Xilinx 4000 - seems
>to be no longer available.
>  
>
If you are building in 10,000 piece quantity, this is mostly true.  For 
the kinds of
projects discussed here, go with Xilinx, and their parts will be 
available for a LONG
time.  There are all sorts of brokers who have batches of ANCIENT Xilinx 
parts
they are still trying to get rid of.

>Choose the supply rail you want to use first,  work from there.
>If you were to pick 5V (say) then don't expect more than a couple more
>years methinks.
>  
>
Yup, the 5V stuff is going out of favor.

Jon