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64 views

Pin Compatibility - Wikipedia

Uploaded by

Brayan Anderson Chumpen Carranza
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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5/11/2020 Pin compatibility - Wikipedia

Pin compatibility
In electronics, pin-compatible devices are electronic components, generally integrated circuits or
expansion cards, sharing a common footprint and with the same functions assigned or usable on the
same pins.[1] Pin compatibility is a property desired by systems integrators as it allows a product to
be updated without redesigning printed circuit boards, which can reduce costs and decrease time to
market.

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.[2] 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.

Contents
Pin-to-pin compatibility
Drop-in compatibility
Software compatibility
See also
External links
References

Pin-to-pin compatibility
Pin-to-pin compatible devices share an assignment of functions to pins, but may have differing
electrical characteristics (supply voltages, or oscillator 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 integrated circuits. The 7400 series devices have been produced on a number of different
manufacturing processes, but have retained the same pinouts throughout. For example, all 7405
devices provide six NOT gates (or inverters) but may have incompatible supply voltage tolerances.

7405 – Standard TTL, 4.75–5.25 V.


74C05 – CMOS, 4–15 V.
74LV05 – Low-voltage CMOS, 2.0–5.5 V.

In other cases, particularly with computers, devices may be pin-to-pin compatible but made
otherwise incompatible as a result of market segmentation. For example, Intel Skylake desktop-class
Core and Xeon E3v5 processors both use the LGA 1151 socket, but motherboards using C230-series
chipsets will only be compatible with Xeon-branded processors, and will not work with Core-branded
processors.[3][4]

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5/11/2020 Pin compatibility - Wikipedia

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 or QFN) 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, or if the device has a multiplexer attached to a pin (which, for
example, may allow the switching of the pin between being driven as GPIO 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
layers. Examples of these include, CMSIS for ARM Cortex-M processors and the now-deprecated
HAL subsystem for UNIX-like operating systems.

See also
7400 series integrated circuits
Programmable logic
Logic family
Semiconductor packages

External links
Giant Internet IC Master Database (https://web.archive.org/web/20080703214923/http://www.king
swood-consulting.co.uk/giicm/) – A list of 74'xx series and other generic chip pinouts.

References
1. "What is pin compatible? definition and meaning" (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/pi
n-compatible.html). BusinessDictionary.com. WebFinance, Inc. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
2. "What is the difference between pin-to-pin compatibility and drop-in compatibility?" (https://www.al
tera.com/support/support-resources/knowledge-base/solutions/rd10261999_1469.html). Altera
Knowledge Center Solution rd10261999_1469. Altera Corporation. 11 December 2012. Retrieved
4 March 2016.
3. "Intel Core i3-6100 Processor (3M Cache, 3.70 GHz) Specifications" (http://ark.intel.com/product
s/90729/Intel-Core-i3-6100-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz#@compatibility). Intel Corporation.
Retrieved 4 March 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_compatibility 2/3
5/11/2020 Pin compatibility - Wikipedia

4. "Intel Xeon Processor E3-1200 V5 Product Family Brief" (http://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/ww


w/public/us/en/documents/product-briefs/xeon-e3-1200v5-brief.pdf) (PDF). Intel Corporation. p. 4.
Retrieved 4 March 2016.

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This page was last edited on 11 August 2020, at 19:49 (UTC).

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