Re: CPLD/FPGA, software and 10 years support

On Wednesday, in article
<4548b353$0$8090$8404b019@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "David Brown" wrote:

Paul Carpenter wrote:
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.

The restriction on size is silly - just get a 2 GB flash drive.

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.

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

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.

archived text format. Anyone serious about long-term support and
development should be insisting on either Verilog or VHDL.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

And note that XP will probably not be available in 10 years time, and

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.

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.

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.

--
Paul Carpenter | paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

.

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