By BJ Moore
In today's world, microcircuit technology is
advancing at a pace unknown even a few years ago. Unfortunately, other aspects of system design still move much
slower. The result - designers must use
great care (and luck) to ensure their designs are not "obsolete right out
of the box". This is especially
true in applications where design to prototype cycles are long. In many complex systems, such as new
aircraft, designs contain components no longer manufactured – before the first
system is ever produced!
Current ICs are discontinued frequently to make
room in production lines for newer, faster, and improved designs. Even the rate at which IC products are
discontinued each year has seen tremendous growth. Texas Instruments (TI), a major chip manufacturer tripled their
IC product line in a short five year span.
Even so, TI discontinued more IC's in 1992 than they made in 1987. In the same period another industry leader,
National Semiconductor, discontinued twice as many IC designs as it even made
in 1987.
The 1970's era Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL)
devices have been in widespread use for over 20 years, while 1990's era
advanced Bi-CMOS TTL devices are expected to have a life span of less than half
that. Many IC's currently have a
production life span of only 6 to 8 years.
Hence, by the time an IC product comes into widespread use it is nearing
its production discontinuance.
Unlike most software upgrades, new IC products
are not necessarily backward compatible.
Changes in pinouts, power requirements and outputs mean that even though
a newer IC may be an improved version of a previous design, it is not
interchangeable. These IC production
changes create opportunities to design smaller, faster, more functional systems
than ever before but also mean designers, production workers and repair staff
are increasingly faced with the situation of unavailable parts. Costly late stage redesign efforts have
been necessary in some cases to keep production on schedule. Production has been delayed in other cases. Post – production problems occur also. Parts for a popular item may be discontinued
while the end item is still in production or parts may not be available for
repair on post-production units.
One tactic, making systems more reliable, is a
two edged sword in relation to parts obsolescence. The product initially works better and longer but more
components have been discontinued by the time repairs are needed. IC manufacturers need a large, continuos demand
to maintain production on an IC but long mean-time-between-failures results in
a large gaps in part demand levels.
So what can be done?
Complex system design companies, such as Boeing,
are using advanced technology to shorten the time significantly from design to
prototype. The Boeing 777 jet is more
advanced than many of its predecessor airplanes but was designed in a fraction
of the time normally required. This
was achieved through heavy application of CAD/CAM and other automated design tools.
Closer relationships between system
manufacturers and IC makers are forewarning designers of impending
discontinuances and helping them locate alternate parts. An early announcement that Intel would quit
producing the Intel 80960 military version microprocessor which had been
integral to the design of the RAH-66 Commanche Scout Attack helicopter’s flight
computer for nearly six years lead to rethinking and added benefits in the
redesign. Boeing, responsible for the
helicopter’s avionics systems analyzed the potential for switching to the
similar commercial version of Intel’s processor. Boeing found that not only were they able to switch to the
commercial IC, they gained considerable increases in performance. Added benefits are that the higher demand
for the commercial IC mean a longer production life, a stable upgrade path, and
solid expectations that they can benefit from they extensive research and
design efforts Intel will continue to put into enhancing this product line. In another example, early discontinuance
notices enabled Grumman to maintain production schedules on the Joint Stars
project and avoid redesign costs estimated at over $460 thousand dollars.
Elimination of parts is one more strategy
companies are using to head off discontinuance problems. Streamlined product designs eliminate parts
through functional consolidation, structural rearrangement and emerging
technologies. This reduction of parts results
in fewer items being discontinued, fewer items needed to be warehoused for
replacement/repair needs and potentially a delay in the onset of parts
obsolescence problems.
IC companies are also concerned with parts
obsolescence. In addition to providing
smooth upgrade paths on the most popular IC designs and developing closer relationships
with their customers, several strategic industrial teaming arrangements have
been made. These arrangements enable
smaller companies to take over production of ICs that are no longer profitable
for the major manufacturers to make on a grand scale. This keeps IC designs in production longer without hurting
profitability of the major chip producers.
It also provides a built-in market for smaller chip production houses. The smaller houses can afford to handle
smaller runs since they require little or no investment in research and
design. One such partnership is
National Semiconductor Corp, Cadence Design Systems and ASPEC Technology who
have joined forces to provide ASIC chips to the military and aerospace
markets.
Rapid discontinuance of ICs will continue to
create parts unavailability problems.
Designers and IC manufacturers need to continue to work on ways to
identify these problems early and to come up with even more methods of dealing
with this increasing problem.
© Dec. 1997, BJ Moore, All Rights Reserved
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Author Bio:
BJ Moore is the founder and President of Lida Ray
Technologies, which provides independent strategic technology planning, analysis
and recommendations to Fortune 500 companies. She is currently assisting Universal Technology
Corporation in its support of the Air Force’s