Dealing with obsolete parts

Almost every successful design will eventually run into “end-of-life” problems where you receive notification that an integrated circuit or other critical part will no longer be manufactured. You have several options: You can purchase a warehouse full of the existing part to cover your expected production. You can redesign the module or system to use a different and hopefully longer life part. Or you could create a new replacement part that works with the existing design. This is the approach taken by design consultants at EmbeddedBlox as they re-engineered an obsolete low-power peripheral controller. Read about their approach and the problems they overcame in a new EDN article entitled “Re-engineering obsolete ICs using FPGAs” by Vipin Ahuja.