1. Purpose and scope
An FPGA-based product is built on a device whose lifecycle its vendor controls. Sooner or later the vendor announces that the device, a package, a speed grade or a temperature grade will stop being made, with a last order date and a last ship date. This stage is the product's answer to that notice, and then the orderly end of the product itself.
Unlike a chip company, the team usually receives the end-of-life notice rather than issuing it. It cannot extend the device's life, so it must choose: buy enough devices to cover the rest of the product's life, move the design to a newer device, or end the product with a support period its customers can plan around. Because the logic is a bitstream on a fixed fabric, moving to a newer device in the same family is often possible without a new board, but it reopens design, verification, implementation, validation and compliance on the new device.
In scope: the obsolescence assessment of the device and other critical parts, the last-time buy decision and its sizing, the migration assessment, the discontinuance notice to customers, final builds from last-time-buy stock, the final field updates and security advisory, spares and repairs, retirement of production keys and the update service, and the final archive. Out of scope: the design work of a migration, which re-enters the lifecycle at System & FPGA Architecture or RTL & HLS Design as a new design on the newer device.
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