A new Era for the Cortex-M at Texas Instruments?
15
Apr
2015
While TI has slowly shrunk the Tiva (former Luminary Micro) families, it has sampled a few weeks ago a Cortex-M4F part. Guess in which top level family the Cortex M4F has landed? Well, the Cortex-M3 was already present in the high performance C2000 family where it shared space with the C28 core; but now, the Cortex-M4F has it all for itself in the new MSP432 – Low power / Performance portfolio. The device claimed the lowest EEMBC ULP benchmark but has since been passed by the Atmel SAML21
The Cortex-M0+ based SAM L family that was announced before Electronica in November last year is now sampling, with general availability in September. The device now has the best score on the Ultra Low Power Benchmark of EEMBC although it has not been certified by EEMBC.
20 devices were unveiled, from the low end 32/4kB to 256/32 kB of Flash/RAM. The SAML21E, G and J families differentiate themselves primarily through the number of ADC and DACs, touch channels as well as the number of timers, TWI and UART. However, all sport a USB 2.0 Host/Device.
There were new parts with revision number B (e.g. ATSAM4S8CB-AU vs. ATSAM4S8CA-AU). This is what Atmel calls MRL – Marketing Revision Level.
On the price front, Atmel is now publishing prices on its web site. Don’t get excited too fast, the subdomain is actually owned by Digikey, and the prices seem to be the same as on the Digikey website. Prices were on the defensive side for the SAM4S with -5 to -15% declines.
FSL released 12 new part numbers, but much to the same tune as Atmel with its MRL, the new parts are merely silicon revisions. All changes happened in the MK22 family.
Nothing happened for FSL prices this month.
NXP was very quiet today on the product front following the acquisition of Freescale.
Pricewise, there was no change.
No product change was seen this month.
Renesas experienced very limited price changes.
No product change this month at SiLabs.
A few price decreases on the SiM while the EFM32 moved into positive territory.
Limited changes – 20 – at ST this month: 3/4 were for TR suffixes and higher temperature versions of existing parts (7 suffix), but ST released 4 new parts from their recently announced STM32F469/479.,
The new families focus on high-performance graphics for “smartphone-like”. It embeds ST’s Chrom-ART Accelerator, the MIPI-DSI display interface, a crypto processor.
The SF469/479 families are sampling now with volume in Q3, pricing starts at $8.29/10ku for the STM32F469AEH6 (512kB Flash/ BGA169).
ST price changes focused on the STM32F051 and 405VGT6TR (-5% and -17%) while a few F407 and F217 parts enjoyed a 10%+ increase.
Great news from TI, in the form of the MSP432. The family sports a Cortex-M4F at up to 48MHz with up to 256kB of Flash. There is only one experimental device the XMS432P401RIPZR. Although you can find some overlap with the Tiva family that also embeds a Cortex-M4, the Tiva runs at a minimum of 80MHz. We might be looking at similar designs with a low power, low frequency process for the MSP432.
For the 2nd month in a row, we see large price decreases for MSP430 on F525 parts, -10% to -27% while some 430G2 parts rose 10%+.
NXP+FSL = overlap or not overlap?
18
Mar
2015
Freescale+NXP = what a wedding! Although not yet finalized, the deal provides for some interesting synergies in the MCU market. NXP is well positionned with semi-custom MCUs for the mobile industry, while Freescale has been gaining momentum in the standard MCU arena. Although their portfolios overlap, NXP has more exotic products (dual core Cortex-M0+Cortex-M4, or Flash less) that cater to niche markets while Freescale’s portfolio serves more mainstream markets. On the flash side, NXP focuses on 32kB and below or 512kB and above while Freescale is heavier at 64, 128, 256 and 512kB. Their combined portfolio will be equivalent in size to ST’s and will easily dwarf Atmels’ and SLAB’s. NXP has nevertheless planned for $200M growing to $500M in cost savings. We will for sure see some pruning.
There were a couple of notable announcements this month at Atmel. The SAM DA1 – A for Automotive – is a 48MHz qualified for the Automotive environment – AEC-Q100. The interesting bit is the integrated peripheral touch controller (PTC). This opens up a host of applications like touch button, slider, wheel or proximity sensing applications. The SAM DA1 comes with 32 to 64 pins, up to 64KB of Flash, 8KB of SRAM. In all, 15 devices were released.
The V7 family (Cortex-M7-based) got a change in its naming convention where a T suffix was added for Tape and Reel – although the revision section mentions T&R the ordering table shows Tray. In the S70J family, same problem, although the T suffix was not added, but the revision list says so. Confused? We are too.
The SAMD21 got new strength with the addition of 104 new devices, some offering new package combinations others the new RWW FLash memory partitionning.
Finally, a number of SAM3S and SAM4S got their new R suffix (Tape and Reel)
On the price front, the portfolio had limited range, from +3% to -3%.
More cleanup this month with 38 more products on the chopping block, either taken off or obsolete or NRND. At the same time, 12 new products made it out of the oven: the MKL17 and MKL27 families. The complement the existing portfolio but on the low end with flash sizes from 32 to 64kB.
Nothing happened for FSL prices this month.
Ha, when we said that something was cooking at NXP :) Beyond the acquisition of Freescale, there were a couple of Cortex-M0+ product released the LPC1125JBD48/303 and LPC1124JBD48/303. NXP announced the Secured versions of the LPC18 and LPC43 families which seem to be adding an AES block to the current versions – non-S of the same products.
Pricewise, there was no change.
Now, this is Renesas’ turn to be quiet… before the storm? No product change was seen this month.
Renesas experienced very limited price changes.
Well, we got some change for once at SiLabs. The first one is no-news: 183 products now have a T suffix – for Tray? The datasheets don’t seem to have moved. A more subtle and interesting change is the way the website is architected. The EFM32 is taking center stage on the main MCU page and 32-bit MCU pages while the Precision32 family needs another click, and is lost in the middle of the page. Is SiLabs slowly phasing out the Precision product line?
A few price increases on the SiM and LG families.
As always, ST sprinkled their portfolio with a few new parts – 19, but the attention this month is on the STM32L4, a few Cortex-M4F running at 80 MHz with 100ua/MHz of active power consumption. Digital peripherals include USB OTG FS.
The STM32L4 is sampling now with GA in Q2 this year, and a price starting at $3.40/10ku (LQFP64).
ST price changes focused on the STM32F031/51 and STM32F407ZGT7 (-9%) while a few F042 parts enjoyed a 4% increase.
TI continues to remove more parts from the Tiva portfolio, 116 this time. Tiva is now left with 169 products. We’re not sure how many more months this family will be in town. On the MSP430 front, 56 products made it through the gate, the MSP430F672/3/6. They complement an already rich family of close to 300 products.
Large price decreases for MSP430 on F525 parts, -10% to -27%.
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