A leading data communications equipment manufacturer.

Some components of the customer's ATM switching board were to become obsolete in a short time. But the customer did not want to discontinue the production of the board since it was not a convincing proposition. One alternative was to replace some of the components, but the prerequisite was that there would be no deterioration in performance of the existing switch and firmware.

Re-engineering was necessary, to increase the life of the board. Obsolete components were identified, and appropriate replacement alternatives were evaluated. Wipro's hardware team took this re-engineering exercise as an opportunity to explore into a possibility of cost reduction. Components with cheaper and more efficient performance characteristics were carefully chosen to ensure that the stringent performance parameters were met. Many discrete components were combined into a single FPGA, older DRAMs were replaced by faster SDRAMs and old PLDs / FPGA devices were replaced with the latest PLDs/FPGA available from the vendor. Using Verilog-XL, both as a development and simulation tool, and Cadence Concept for schematics, a team of five Wipro engineers delivered the re-designed board in a span of 8 months.

Re-engineering the board resulted in an increase of its life by a span of 5 years. The customer was delighted with the dramatic 300US$ decrease in cost of the board.

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