which cyclone?

[Altera_Forum]

I am new to Altera devices. I am trying to decide between Cyclone 3, 4 and 5. But still confused.  

My main requirements are -  Number of IOs: Same package/footprint should be available with higher IOs Power consumption - not a big deal Long device life: at least 5 yrs before being obsoleted. Preferably 10 yrs. IOs operating at 3.3V Application is general purpose logic, no high speed serial stuff.  I am inclined toward Cyclone 5, since it's the newest in the Cyclone family.

[Altera_Forum]

I would agree with you for new designs, go Cyclone V. the 3.3 IO's are still supported but you should have overshoot protection diodes. (which is recommend on all these families) 

 It's a great part family. Only real problem is the naming convention they used.  Cyclone III will probably be around for awhile, but they are dropping support in quartus soon. So you would be stuck in the current version of Quartus for several years. Since Cyclone IV is on a similar process, I could see them dropping it fairly soon as far as support in Quartus as well. Cyclone V is brand new and will be around for many years yet.   The 10 Families are not out yet, and there are targeting the Arria Family and Stratix Families primarily.    Pete

[Altera_Forum]

I would expect any of the families to be around 15-20 years at least. I know companies are still shipping boards with flex10k devices on them, which are 15-20 years old.

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

besides Support by QuartusII seems to be dropped earlier now than in the past Releases, I do hope the availability of the Hardware will not be shortened similarly. we have to support our customer for some decades with boards and cannot redesign the board every 5 to 7 year. Currently we have Cyclone II installed and on a last time buy design we are using Flex 8K :-) The Long time availability of devices is why I tend towards FPGA based rather µC designs and towards ALTERA

[Altera_Forum]

What about migration to a higher IO and logic device in the same family. 

Does Cyclone V offer easy upgrade option - same footprint, but higher IO and more logic gates?  anakha, by protection diodes, you mean external to the FPGA? This recommendation is only for 3.3v IOs?  The Cyclone V GX starter kit seems to be out of stock. But the Cyclone IV DE0-Nano seems to be available. I am pretty sure, migrating design from IV to V is simple.

[Altera_Forum]

Can anyone confirm the IO protection diodes.

[Altera_Forum]

Usually some devices in a family are pin compatible. Ie, you can design your board for a larger device and then fit the smaller one with a view to upgrade later. But make sure you check on this as some changes are not pin compatible. 

 Migrating from a iV to V should be little more than re-assigning your device and pins in your project and then recompiling, unless you have some heavily family specific logic.

[Altera_Forum]

Cyclone V does have internal clamping diodes, but they must be manually enabled in the QSF except when you have a PCI io standard selected. 

 http://www.altera.com/literature/manual/mnl_qsf_reference.pdf   Page 408 talks about this.  Pete