| ??? 04/15/09 19:23 Read: times |
#164630 - All depending on product and actual product usage Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Richard Erlacher said:
Typical product lifespan, these days, is about three years. If the product works as intended, then maintainability isn't an issue if the product works properly. If it has to be changed within the three year product life, well, it's badly designed/debugged/tested and the people in charge, and the product itself, should be replaced. You have to take platform products into account. These may be used with a very wide range of softwares, or may be reengineered slightly and rebranded to multiple customers. They may start out as generic platforms that are reasonably good at several things. But if you get a request for k volumes you may decide to tweak the AD section to get two extra bits of resolution, or maybe switch to a processor with more RAM to perform some analysis locally or you may get a customer that would like an extra CAN interface... I do a lot of work with products where you have to wait three years and look back to know what the actual usages was. So developing a new product, I have to spend a lot of time guessing what will be good design choices and what parts of the product that should be kept reasonably cheap because of less customer interest. This makes it interesting to select a relatively cheap processor that has pin-compatible big brothers available just in case. |
