Every quarter brings a stack of product discontinuation notices, but this quarter's stack was taller than usual. Across the suppliers we track for customers, more than forty legacy logic, interface, and small-signal parts moved to end-of-life status in Q2 - many with last-time-buy windows closing before the end of the year.

Why the notices are clustering

Two forces are converging. First, suppliers are rationalizing old product lines to free up mature-node capacity for parts with better margins - the same legacy-node squeeze we've written about before. Second, several older fab processes are being retired outright, which takes every product built on them down at once. When a process dies, the EOL notices come in batches, not one at a time.

The categories getting hit

  • Single-gate and small-package logic - older packages (SOT, TSSOP variants) are being trimmed in favor of newer footprints, even where the function survives.
  • Legacy interface transceivers - RS-232/RS-485 era parts and older USB PHYs, especially in industrial temperature grades.
  • Older clock and timing devices - fixed-function clock buffers and generators that newer programmable parts have replaced in current designs.
  • Mature-node EEPROMs and small flash - small densities that no longer justify wafer starts.

The common thread: these are exactly the parts that sit unnoticed in long-life industrial, medical, and aerospace BOMs. Nobody designs them in anymore - but thousands of active designs still depend on them.

How to read an EOL notice properly

The dates matter more than the headline. Every notice carries a last-time-buy date (your final chance to place an order) and a last-ship date (when the final deliveries go out). The gap between them is your planning window, and it's often shorter than a full demand-planning cycle. The trap we see most often: teams size their LTB on current run-rate and forget service, repair, and warranty demand - which for long-life products can exceed production demand over the remaining years.

Your LTB checklist

  • Cross your active BOMs against this quarter's notices - including sub-assemblies your CM buys on your behalf.
  • Size the buy on total remaining lifetime demand: production, service, warranty, and a scrap allowance.
  • Decide where the inventory lives. Bonded stock with scheduled releases beats a pallet in your own stockroom tying up cash.
  • If you missed a window, move fast - post-EOL supply gets thinner and riskier every month.

If the window already closed

Missed LTBs are recoverable, but the playbook changes: verified excess from other OEMs, authorized aftermarket sources, and qualified alternates become the options. This is also where counterfeit risk spikes - discontinued parts are a favorite target for remarkers. Anything sourced post-EOL should go through full AS6081 screening before it touches your line.

We run lifecycle monitoring across customer BOMs as part of our VMI program - when a notice drops on a part you use, you hear about it from us with a recommended buy quantity, not from a stockout six months later.