Life of 100 Pin EPM7256AE

First of all, I don't work for Intel, so nothing I say is official.

That being said, that series of parts has been around at least 17 years now. It is basically living on borrowed time right now. There are still enough customers using it for Intel to maintain production and supply distributors (you can still buy them from Mouser, DigiKey, etc).

If I were doing a redesign of an existing product now that used this part I would design it out and move to a newer generation. I would be very surprised if this series is still in active production 5 yrs from now.

There is no drop in replacement, however. You will have to go back to the original sources and update them (possibly significantly) to move to a newer generation series (depends a LOT on how the original part was designed).

If you don't have the original source and want to stick with this part, then it is basically a crapshoot when Intel sends out the EOL/LTB notice. If your product is low volume and the part goes EOL next year, you may be forced to buy 3 or 4 years of inventory by the LTB (last time buy) date. Could be $$$ based on your production volume.

So no easy answer or decision for you.