[silverpikezero]

It's not a bogus argument. The author here is flat out incorrect. There are many bit-level resources on a modern FPGA which could be configured to both source and sink current on the same wire. Any transistors set in this mode most certainly will burn out, at minimum the wire track, but at maximum an entire region of the die.

EDIT: Modern process makes this problem worse actually, since wires are by definition smaller, decreasing their failure threshold. Even a short for a nanosecond can cause irreversible damage.

[jacquesm]

> Even a short for a nanosecond can cause irreversible damage.

Jumped out at me. 1 nanosecond is 10-9 second, assuming two switching elements with a 10 Ohm RDSON connected to the rails (probably on the low side, such small elements usually have a rather high ON resistance) that's a 20 Ohm series resistance on 3.3V causing assuming an instantaneous rise (which it won't be) which leaves you with about 0.5 nano-Joule of energy spread out over two locations. That's an extremely small amount of energy to be able to cause damage, surprising!

[CamperBob2]

Hard to say what the true damage potential is like, because the numbers become unintuitive to work with at such small scales. The feature sizes we're talking about are smaller than most known viruses, so it wouldn't take much heat to damage them. Be interesting to go through the math.

[jacquesm]

I think the potential for damage will be closely related to how often that particular state occurs.