ASIC to FPGA/CPLD Adapters offer Big Cost Savings

As the trend for extended product life continues to become more popular, the product development and the mid-life improvement programmes of electronic equipments are quickly vanishing into the future. The advantage of an interposer is that, at the time of design, special requirements can be incorporated. Quite often the new design can provide product improvement as well as solving supply issues and the adapter offers an excellent platform for this to be undertaken. Issues commonly occur during the procurement for the extended life product when ASICs and early PLDs and CPLDs are involved, and this inevitably means a bounce back to the design engineer's desk. However, as these devices are software configurable, their replacement with currently available similar devices becomes a relatively easy process as, for once, the software required becomes the easier of the tasks to be undertaken. The issue of integrating the new hardware device into an existing design, a design which was created a number of years ago using, what was then, cutting edge technology can be overcome with the right choice of component and adherence to some simple guidelines. An adapter from Winslow Adaptics will provide a bridge, a means of travelling across the void left by component unavailability. If this concept of bridging was applied at initial design conception it would be possible for foundations to left in designs for future bridges to be built across critical components. This would allow for future supply chain problems to be solved with greater ease and the phrase pro-active obsolescence management would become a reality.