In
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
, pin-compatible devices are
electronic component
An electronic component is any basic discrete device or physical entity in an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are mostly industrial products, available in a singular form and are not ...
s, generally
integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
s or
expansion card
In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slo ...
s, sharing a common
footprint
Footprints are the impressions or images left behind by a person walking or running. Hoofprints and pawprints are those left by animals with hooves or paws rather than feet, while "shoeprints" is the specific term for prints made by shoes. The ...
and with the same functions assigned or usable on the same
pin
A pin is a device used for fastening objects or material together.
Pin or PIN may also refer to:
Computers and technology
* Personal identification number (PIN), to access a secured system
** PIN pad, a PIN entry device
* PIN, a former Dutch ...
s.
Pin compatibility is a property desired by
systems integrators as it allows a product to be updated without redesigning
printed circuit board
A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...
s, which can reduce costs and decrease
time to market
In commerce, time to market (TTM) is the length of time it takes from a product being conceived until its being available for sale. The reason that time to market is so important is since being late erodes the addressable market into which prod ...
.
Although devices which are pin-compatible share a common footprint, they are not necessarily electrically or thermally compatible. As a result, manufacturers often specify devices as being either ''pin-to-pin'' or ''drop-in'' compatible.
Pin-compatible devices are generally produced to allow upgrading within a single
product line, to allow
end-of-life devices to be replaced with newer equivalents, or to compete with the equivalent products of other manufacturers.
Pin-to-pin compatibility
''Pin-to-pin compatible'' devices share an assignment of functions to pins, but may have differing electrical characteristics (supply
voltage
Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to m ...
s, or
oscillator
Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...
frequencies) or thermal characteristics (
TDPs,
reflow curves, or
temperature tolerances). As a result, their use in a system may require that portions of the system, such as its power delivery subsystem, be adapted to fit the new component.
A common example of pin-to-pin compatible devices which may not be electrically compatible are the
7400 series
The 7400 series of integrated circuits (ICs) are a popular logic family of transistor–transistor logic (TTL) logic chips.
In 1964, Texas Instruments introduced the SN5400 series of logic chips, in a ceramic semiconductor package. A lo ...
integrated circuits. The 7400 series devices have been produced on a number of different manufacturing processes, but have retained the same
pinout
In electronics, a pinout (sometimes written "pin-out") is a cross-reference between the contacts, or ''pins'', of an electrical connector or electronic component, and their functions. "Pinout" now supersedes the term "basing diagram" that was the s ...
s throughout. For example, all 7405 devices provide six
NOT gates (or inverters) but may have incompatible supply voltage tolerances.
* 7405 – Standard
TTL
TTL may refer to:
Photography
* Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature
* Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability
Technology
* Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism
* Transistor–transistor lo ...
, 4.75–5.25 V.
* 74C05 –
CMOS, 4–15 V.
* 74LV05 – Low-voltage CMOS, 2.0–5.5 V.
In other cases, particularly with
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
s, devices may be pin-to-pin compatible but made otherwise incompatible as a result of
market segmentation
In marketing, market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as ''segments'') based on some type of shared characte ...
. For example,
Intel Skylake
Skylake is the codename used by Intel for a processor microarchitecture that was launched in August 2015 succeeding the Broadwell microarchitecture. Skylake is a microarchitecture redesign using the same 14 nm manufacturing process tech ...
desktop-class
Core
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
and
Xeon E3v5 processors both use the
LGA 1151
LGA 1151, also known as Socket H4, zero insertion force flip-chip land grid array (LGA) socket for Intel desktop processors which comes in two distinct versions: the first revision which supports both Intel's Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs, ...
socket, but
motherboard
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
s using C230-series
chipset
In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components
An electronic component is any basic discrete device or physical entity in an electronic system used to affect electrons or their associated fields. Electronic components are ...
s will only be compatible with Xeon-branded processors, and will not work with Core-branded processors.
Drop-in compatibility
A ''drop-in compatible'' device is a device which may be swapped with another without need to make compensating alterations to the system the device was a part of. The device will have the same functions available on the same pins, and will be electrically and thermally compatible. Such devices may not be an exact match to the devices they can replace. For example, they may have a wider range of supply voltage or temperature tolerances.
Software compatibility
''Software-compatible'' devices are devices which are able to run the same software to produce the same results without the software having to be modified first.
Microcontrollers,
FPGAs, and other programmable devices may be pin-to-pin compatible from the perspective of the program on the device, but incompatible in terms of hardware. For example, the device may take the signal on pin X,
negate it, and output the result on pin Y. If the method of configuring a pin remains the same but the
package of the device (such as
TSSOP
The Thin Shrink Small Outline Package (TSSOP) is a rectangular surface mount plastic integrated circuit (IC) package with gull-wing leads.
Application
They are suited for applications requiring 1 mm or less mounted height and are common ...
or
QFN
Flat no-leads packages such as quad-flat no-leads (QFN) and dual-flat no-leads (DFN) physically and electrically connect integrated circuits to printed circuit boards. Flat no-leads, also known as micro leadframe (MLF) and SON (small-outline no l ...
) changes, the program will continue to function but the physical locations of the pins the program works with may change.
A device may also be pin-compatible while being software-incompatible. This may occur when the device uses a different
instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
, or if the device has a
multiplexer
In electronics, a multiplexer (or mux; spelled sometimes as multiplexor), also known as a data selector, is a device that selects between several analog or digital input signals and forwards the selected input to a single output line. The sel ...
attached to a pin (which, for example, may allow the switching of the pin between being driven as
GPIO
A general-purpose input/output (GPIO) is an uncommitted digital signal pin on an integrated circuit or electronic circuit (e.g. MCUs/ MPUs ) board which may be used as an input or output, or both, and is controllable by software.
GPIOs have no ...
or by an
A/D) and that multiplexer selects, by default, a different input source than is selected on the device being replaced.
To ease the use of software-incompatible devices, manufacturers often provide
hardware abstraction layer
Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that provide programs with access to hardware resources through programming interfaces. The programming interface allows all devices in a particular class ''C'' of hardware devices to be acce ...
s. Examples of these include,
CMSIS for
ARM Cortex-M
The ARM Cortex-M is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by Arm Holdings. These cores are optimized for low-cost and energy-efficient integrated circuits, which have been embedded in tens of billions of consumer devices. Though ...
processors and the now-deprecated
HAL subsystem for
UNIX-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
operating systems.
See also
*
7400 series
The 7400 series of integrated circuits (ICs) are a popular logic family of transistor–transistor logic (TTL) logic chips.
In 1964, Texas Instruments introduced the SN5400 series of logic chips, in a ceramic semiconductor package. A lo ...
integrated circuits
*
Programmable logic
A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, a PLD has an undefined function at the time of manu ...
*
Logic family
In computer engineering, a logic family is one of two related concepts:
* A logic family of monolithic digital integrated circuit devices is a group of electronic logic gates constructed using one of several different designs, usually with compati ...
*
Semiconductor packages
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
External links
Giant Internet IC Master Database– A list of 74'xx series and other generic chip pinouts.
References
{{reflist, colwidth=30em
Integrated circuits
Interoperability