Active production — no shortage signal on this Cyclone IV E density point
The EP4CE55F29C8: For the shortage-desk buyer, this means the part is still in the franchised channel and not subject to the allocation windows that hit older 90-nm families. The 55,856 logic elements and 2,396,160 RAM bits place it in the mid-range of the Cyclone IV E family — a density tier that typically sees stable lead times unless a concurrent FPGA shortage cycle tightens supply.
55,856 LEs and 2,396,160 RAM bits — the gate-count and memory fit
The 55,856 logic elements (3491 LABs/CLBs) define the usable gate budget for the design. For a firmware-bringup engineer, this is the resource that constrains the RTL — a 50,000-LE image fits with margin; a 70,000-LE image does not. The 2,396,160 total RAM bits (about 2.3 Mbit) are embedded block RAM, not external memory. Enough for moderate FIFO buffers or a small frame buffer in a display or communication pipeline, but designs needing larger data storage will budget an external SDRAM or SRAM on the board.
374 I/O in a 780-BGA — the pin-limited resource
374 user I/O are available in the 780-ball BGA (29x29 mm, 1.0 mm pitch). For the PCB layout engineer, this is a 4-layer board minimum for fan-out — the inner rows of the BGA require via-in-pad or microvias on a high-density design. An enclosure with forced airflow or a heatsink is expected if the device dissipates more than a few watts at the high end of the range.