Introduction

What to do when a chip you’re using is discontinued and you don’t want to change your PCB layout? One of our customers came to us with this tricky question and asked us to develop a drop-in replacement for the discontinued keypad encoder IC.

Customer Challenge

The main challenge was to replace a no longer available IC with a drop-in replacement | so that no PCB layout, firmware or software changes were required to the rest of the system.

The Solution

Luckily, the chip housing was the «outdated» dual in-line (DIL) package – this allowed us to use a CPLD in a compact ball grid array package to reproduce the same functionality, and then assemble it to a PCB that reproduces the DIL form factor.

The Result

A small PCB accommodates the CPLD and DIL pin headers, and then slots seamlessly into the mainboard – without any PCB layout, firmware and software changes.

Keywords

Intel® MAX® V | VHDL | FPGA System Design | FPGA Hardware | FPGA HDL