October MCU update: Cortex-M7 big bang, ST jumps the gun, who else is in?
16
Oct
2014
ARM made a big splash at their Tech Con earlier this month with the announcement of the Cortex-M7. ARM has rounded up some big names in the MCU market: Atmel, Freescale and ST have all licensed the core, with a few more unannounced ones.
Interestingly, ST has jumped the gun and released the first Cortex-M7 based family, the STM32F7. The first STM32F7 silicon was demonstrated at the ARM Tech Con. Atmel and Freescale are not far behind, and we should see the release of a slew of new Cortex-M7 based products in the coming months
With ARM spilling the Cortex-M7 beans and ST showing silicon at ARM tech con, Atmel has been compelled to accelerate the PR millbefore the planned announcement at Electronica as we wrote last month. The release gave some good insight into the soon-to-be-named family. SAM7 is already taken by legacy ARM7-based products.Interestingly, the new family belongs to the team that owns the application processors based on the Cortex-A. It suggests that the target applications for the Cortex-M7 overlap to a larger degree with the low end of the Cortex-A target markets.
The portfolio will come in 3 flavors: general purpose, connectivity and automotive-qualified.
The overall specs disclosed where aggressive with a frequency of up to 300MHz for the first devices and a generous 384 kB of RAM for 2MB of Flash, stock USB HS OTG and HS PHY, with Ethernet for the connectivity flavor.
Aside, from that big bang, Atmel released 65 new SAMD20 products, most of them being higher temperature versions of existing products and 5 with new UFBGA packages.
Atmel had minor price updates, around +/-2%.
Freescale was also part of the big bang Cortex-M7 annoucement, but kept quiet on their plan for samples and portfolio.
At the same time, they quietly published 37 new products. There was a brand new family, the KLx7 split roughly in half with (KL27) or without (KL17) USB Device FS. The KLx7 family focuses on a 48MHz Cortex-M0+, with 128-256 kB Flash.
In this new release was a unique part: the MK24FN256VDC12. Details are still a bit sketchy but if it holds true, it would be the first Kinetis to have the same amount of RAM and Flash – 256kB. In the Cortex-M world, ST was the only one with such parts, namely a couple of STM32F334 and STM32F105.
Finally, the MKL3 family was beefed up with 5 new devices. These are 48 MHz Cortex-M0+ parts with LCD support and no USB. The KL4 adds USB to the KL3 and welcomed 5 new parts as well.
No price change at FSL.
NXP refreshed its lineup with a new LPC82x family, a 30 MHz Cortex-M0+ with 16 and 32 kB Flash options, one ADC, one comparator, 3 USART and 2 SPIs. It also added a low-end LPC11E35 with 64kB of Flash. These are single 3.3V supply with limited interfaces.NXP did some cleanup on parts that are not described in their datasheeets – thanks. A number of products with F suffixes were removed (Cortex-M0 based), while the mysterious LPC810M021JN8 disapeared too.
On the Cortex-M3 front, the oddball parts we saw last month disappeared. They were labelled LPC18S and were not described in the nomenclature. 2 other parts, the LPC18UK and LPC18UC were in development and taken off as well.
Finally, the Cortex-M4+M0 families were updated with 2 new products, the LPC43S20FBD144 and LPC43S57JET256. Apparently, the S signifies without AES.
NXP had some good activity at the distribution this month with LPC1E67/68 and LPC11U67/68 generally down 20% across the volumes. LPC11C22FBD48/301 was up ~50% for all volumes below 100 units and LPC810M021FN8 up by close to 100% from 1 unit to 5k units.
Renesas continues the ramp up of the RL78 with the creation of the RL78/D1x for the automotive market. This will transition customers from the aging 78K0. For motor control, there are now 6 more products to complete the RL78/G1G family.
The RX relase was stronger with 27 products on the low end – RX111, 32 MHz, 48 or 64 pins, up to 544 kB of Flash and 4 RX63 100MHz 80 pins 544 or 416 kB of Flash.
Renesas experienced no price change.
Still no signs of movement at Silicon Labs, it’s been 16 months now since the acquisition of Energy Micro by Silicon Labs. No price change either…
The big news is the launch of the STM32F7 family based on the newly announced Cortex-M7.
ST demonstrated a working silicon of the family, the STM32F756NGH6 at the ARM Tech Con and got the Best of Show award.
The Cortex-M7 differentiates itself from its predecessors by its higher performance through:
- A six-stage pipeline
- Tightly-coupled memories
- A 64-bit AXI AMBA4 interface with I-cache and D-cache
Other differences are highlighted below (source: ARM):
The STM32F7 is the top of the line ST MCU and boasts all the high end interfaces, including
- 2 USB ports with 1 OTG FS and one OTG HS
- 1 Ethernet port
- 1 TFT LCD port
- 1 HDMI port
- 2 CAN
The list of all the building blocks is pretty impressive – see below, source STMicroelectronics.
When looking at the STM32 portfolio if STM wants to keep pin compatibility with the STM32F4, we will naturally see parts at 100, 144 and 176 pins – the larger red rings above STM32F4. The initial part is likely compatible with the other 7 parts at 216 pins.
On the frequency front, with Atmel at 300MHz, and ARM claiming 400MHz @40nm, we should expect higher frequencies, and there is room since the Cortex-M4 based ST parts are now maxed out at 180MHz.
Finally, higher processing and more interfaces will call for more code and data i.e. more Flash. Unless STM takes the route used by NXP with high frequency flashless devices interfacing through quad SPI to external Flash. The initial devices embed a dual quad SPI, see block diagram above, certainly adding flexibility to the design.
Oh, and there were 13 other new parts, but like last month, most of them are either TR (tape and reel) or industrial temp (-40 +105C) of existing parts.
Little price changes at ST.
TI released 4 new Tiva parts, mainly package variations of existing parts. On the MSP430 front, we found 30 new parts
- MSP430FR: 6 new parts, FRAM series
- MSP430I20: 24 new parts,for metering and industrial applications
IoT interoperability – NXP refreshes up – Renesas loads up
15
Sep
2014
IoT seems to be catching all the buzz these days. One of the challenges to grow the market will be interoperability. A bit like Betamax vs. VHS or Blue Ray vs. HD DVD, a number of industry heavy weights have thrown their punches into the ring with competing interests and standards. The latest efforts come from Renesas with the R-In consortium focused on industrial equipment – manufacturing, cameras and robots. A month before, Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung and Wind River announced the Open Interconnect Consortium to “Drive Seamless Device-to-Device Connectivity”. On July 15th it was Google, Freescale ARM, Samsung and SiLabs to name a few who founded Thread to connect products around the home. In March it was AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel with the Industrial Internet Consortium . And it all started when the AllSeen Alliance sprung up with Haier, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Silicon Image, TP-LINK on board last year. Finally, we shouldn’t forget about the IPSO Alliance that has been advocating for “establishing the Internet Protocol as the basis for the connection of Smart Objects”.
We can be sure there will be epic battles to win a market that is planned to grow to $26B by 2020.
Back down to earth for us mortals, there are rumors of lots of new products including a low power Atmel ARM based MCU for November. More recently, NXP has woken up with a few refreshes. Were they consumed by the Apple M8 before the new iPhone launch?
Renesas in the meantime was busy spinning new versions of its 100MHz RX63, 90 in total.
Atmel has been quiet for the past month, but we should expect new ARM based silicon for Electronica in November. That silicon sampled early September. Likely low-end.
The K02 parts are now back on the site, but that was the only change. Only 4 came back up, in 64 and 128K Flash flavors, all 100MHz, but the VLF – LQFP48 packages are gone (2 parts).
NXP released the LPC810M021JN8 but we can now only find traces of it. Might have been a change in name since the LPC810M021FN8 has the same package (DIP8).
On the Cortex M3 front, NXP quietly released 6 products, 3 of which seem to be refreshes of existing products:
- LPC18S10FBD144
- LPC18S30FET256
- LPC18S50FET256
2 others are the LPC18UC and LPC18UK. UC suffixes are traditionally WLCSP packages. The last one is the more traditional LPC1817FDB44, for now in development.
Lastly, on the Cortex M4 front, 2 new products showed up, similar to the LPC18S, they seem to be refreshes of existing products:
- LPC43S20FBD144
- LPC43S57JET256
There were also documentation refreshes.
Renesas released not less than 90 products in the RX63 families.
- 630: 8 new parts: 100 MHz, USB, from 384 to 1024 kB Flash, 80 to 144 pins, adding to the 60 already present
- 631: 49 new parts: 100 MHz, from 256 kB to 2 MB, adding to the 152 already present
- 63N: 33 new parts: 100 MHz, from 768 kB to 2 MB, adding to the 177 already present
Renesas continues the ramp up of the RL78 G14 high performance family, adding 36 new produts.
Still no signs of movement at Silicon Labs last month.
There were 22 new parts at ST this month, but like last month most of them are either TR (tape and reel) or industrial temp (-40 +105C) of existing parts. The temperature code 3 had been elucidated, it is -40 to +125, for harsh environment industrial applications. A few parts drew our attention:
- Five F401xD parts give a 384kB Flash option to the portfolio
- The F072RBI6 is likely a UFBGA package, but why the redundance with the F072RBH6 at least in the datasheet, unless there is a typo?
Finally, the STM32F050 is now completely gone off the radar and replaced by a number of alternatives in the F03x, F04x and F051 families. A few of the F429/439 families were let go too.
Not much change on the Tiva side while, on the MSP430 front, we found lots of new parts
- MSP430A0 and A1: 45 new parts, seem related to the F1 family, but unclear from the web site
- MSP430F1: 5 new parts, adding to the 152 already present
- MSP430FR: 94 new parts, adding to the 152 already present
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