Damaged Cyclone 3 Chips

Thanks pletz and FvM!

Does it mean that when there is a short circuit between VCCINT and gnd, as well as between the IOBANKs and gnd, there is a very high chance that this is due to high voltage transients?

For my VCCINT, the 1.2V input is actually produced by a voltage regulator. The last i checked, my voltage regulator is working as it should be. From what i heard, the output of voltage regulators should be pretty stable right?

From the application notes, it is recommended that i apply a series resistor to the I/O pins to minimize voltage overshoot. But if i add a resistor for each I/O pin (which in my case runs up to something like 55pins), it'll be quite tedious. So before i embark on doing this tedious task, i'd just like to verify that there is a high possibility that my chip died really because of the absence of these series resistors.