ATF150x PLCC end of life for certain formats

[GlennSmith]

Hi all,
Looking to order a few ATF1508's for experimenting, I noticed (at Mouser), that certain ATF150x in PLCC formats are listed as "End of life". It looks currently like it's only the PLCC84 formats - but beware... Not sure what other surprises are in store. Thx Microchip.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

GlennSmith wrote:

I noticed (at Mouser), that certain ATF150x in PLCC formats are listed as "End of life". It looks currently like it's only the PLCC84 formats - but beware... Not sure what other surprises are in store. Thx Microchip.

Can’t entirely finger Microchip for that—it was expected. 

The industry has been on a slow move away from PLCC packages in general, with a number of different products in PLCC being discontinued in the last several years.  In the ATF1508’s specific case, I’m actually surprised that the PLCC-84 version persisted as long as it did.  The package is huge and eats up a lot of PCB real estate, even if not socketed.  In contrast, the TQFP-100 version has a footprint that is about 25 percent of the PLCC-84 package, but with more general purpose I/O pins (64 in PLCC, 80 in TQFP).  Of course, good luck with handling a TQFP part...and PCB layout and soldering can get interesting with 20-mil pin pitch!

So far, the ATF1504 continues to be available in PLCC-44, but I suspect that is not long for this world as well.

Another package form that I think is going to slowly fade away is SOIC, which has 50-mil pin pitch.  Automatic pick-and-place makes the coarser pitches unnecessary in mass production, so designers are going with the dinky packages and saving PCB space, plus reducing overall product size.  The people who decide what stays and what gets EOLed in the electronics world don’t care about the homebrew computer universe—we hobby types don’t buy enough product to matter to the bottom line.

If you have long-range plans to use the PLCC version of the 1508 in your designs, now would be the time to spend some money and buy enough to handle foreseeable needs.  Mouser shows plenty of stock for the ATF1508AS-7JX84, at least on the US website.

[greghol]

2024 is the year of the CPLD axing. AMD (Xilinx) announced earlier this year the discontinuance of the whole CPLD portfolio. This month is the LTB Last Time Buy deadline for AMD. I had to find a replacement for the XC9500XL parts for about 10 boards from 9572 to 95288. Looks like Lattice LC4000Vs are it since we need 5V tolerance too.

Greg

[Yuri]

Looks like the other PLCC formats are marked as well now.
I suppose worse case you could make a breakout board for the SMD packages and have a few manufactured for you.

[wayfarer]

Ive also heard a lot of tale that cplds in general are on their way out.
some of the Intel MAX series are FPGAs under the hood, I get scoffed at and chastised for mentioning them some places.
I still think they have use for stability/reliability, simple designs, and lower bit-width devices like the personal built machines you see here.
The 100 pin ATF1508 is very attractive, Im tempted to build a breakout board for it. There does not seem to be a lot of small fpgas around to fill the gap. Im also looking at the ispMach 4128/4256

[plasmo]

This is a breakout board for EPM7128S (compatible with ATF1508). The QFP pitch is 0.65mm, which is sufficiently apart to be soldered with a standard tip. I do switch to fine tip when solder 0.5mm pitch SMT. This is not a general breakout board since the serial port, CF interface, reset and oscillator inputs are pre-wired.
Bill