Semiconductor Products Insight

Semiconductor Products Insight

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TI quits on Tiva?

15

Feb

2014

Embedded World is just around the corner, and we can feel the heat already, with the announcement a few days ago of the first Cortex-M0+ family from STMicroelectronics. More products and pricing changes were made too. We are also hearing rumors of a new product line from Atmel that will be announced at the show, stay tuned for more information.

TI has announced 1,100 layoffs last month, and the Tiva (former Luminary Micro) team was on the chopping block. Will the Cortex-M architecture be taken off the MCU map at TI?

Atmel

Atmel is slowly getting rid of the reel parts (suffixed R), 37 this month, all in the SAM4S family, with the regular part (no R suffix) staying the same.
Concurrently, they are launching 22 parts in the low end side of the SAM4S, namely the SAM4S2 and SAM4S4 with 128 and 256 kB of Flash respectively, 120MHz and 1 USB, below $2.8/$3.5 at Mouser.

Freescale

Freescale was active this month with 13 new products across the board, from MK2 to MK6 and one MKL part.

We discussed last month the ramp of the KL02 and we erroneously mentioned it would compete with the Atmel SAMG. Actually, after doing a short analysis, the MKL02 is more akin to the Atmel SAMD20E especially in the 32-pin segment. A quick check at disty indicates a price advantage for MKL02 though.
We also removed most of the obsolete parts (83 in total).

NXP

NXP added 4 LPC11U67/8JBD, all Cortex-M0 50MHz USB LQFP parts, priced at $3-$3.5 (1ku) at Disty. 30 parts came into production, mostly LPC18 and LPC43 144-pin parts.

Renesas

Renesas had a stable RX and RL78 portfolio this month, apart from the R5F5631NFDLH being removed.
In the RX family, 16 products from the RX623 family and 4 parts from the RX210 family went into production while not less than 63 parts (RX63xx) came into sampling status. In the RL78 family 41 additional parts were put in production and 39 sampled.

SiliconLabs

The portfolio and price (EFM and SiM3) are stable this month.

ST Microelectronics

Interesting times at ST this month, with a new family, and quite a number of changes in the portfolio.

While (and maybe because) ST pioneered the massive use of the Cortex M0 architecture in its MCU portfolio, it is late to the market with the lower power Cortex M0+. Better late than never though, the new STM32L0 ultra-low-power series embeds a 32MHz Cortex-M0+ core, and a 12-bit ADC. 12 devices are made public this month, the full featured ones.

The STM32L0 family is offered in three lines:

Common features include a power consumption of 139 uA/MHz @ 32MHz, 87 uA/MHz using an optimized mode, and 400nA in Stop mode with full RAM retention and a 3.5us wake-up time.
The series also include up to 64kB Flash, up to 8KB SRAM, and 2KB EEPROM.
Other features include:

  • Hardware oversampling capability for 16-bit ADC resolution
  • Hardware engine encryption (AES) as an option
  • Devices with USB support battery charger detection/link power management and a crystal-less operation

Packages proposed are:

  • UQFN 32 (5x5mm)
  • LQFP 32 (7x7mm)
  • LQFP 48 (7x7mm)
  • LQFP 64 (10x10mm)
  • BGA 64 (5x5mm)

The devices are now available for sampling from US$0.85 @ 1ku, with volume production in Q2 2014.

This product segment doesn’t look like too crowded yet. Freescale MKL04 is a bit oversized at 128 kB Flash for now, but smaller version are surely in the works. Renesas offers the RL78 with USB and LCD support, but for now at a larger footprint. Silicon Labs/Energy Micro have the Zero gecko, but none has USB or an LCD controller, in essence the same limitation that the Atmel SAMD20 suffers from. Finally, TI has the MSP430F6 but like Freescale, the Flash size doesn’t go below 128kB.

Now, this announcement shouldn’t shadow the other changes made to the portfolio. In addition to the 12 STM32L0, parts, 43 other low end parts were introduced. They are divided between the F031/71 and the F042. Looking at the specifications, though, there is a large overlap with the F050 which is being progressively removed – 4 parts this month have disappeared and all the rest has been obsoleted. It would be interesting to check if the process has changed with the 31/71. The F072, looks also very similar to the F102 albeit with a Cortex M3.
The F0x1 have touch sense but no USB, while the F0x2 have both.
7 F401 parts were introduced in the same batch, these are larger Flash parts – 512kB.
Finally, the F313 is no longer with us and in the F383, only the WLCSP part remains.

Texas Instruments

With the decision to layoff 1,100 personel, the Tiva team is reduced, with a possible shutdown of the operations in Austin. It is unclear whether the Cortex M architecture will continue on standalone at TI. Possible clues are found in the presence of a Cortex M in the C2000 family. But, at the same time, the MSP430 remains very strong with a portfolio of 1800 parts, of which 45 were added last month, mostly in the 430F5 and F6 families (USB and LCD+USB).
In the Tiva camp, the 129 series separate web page was folded into the Tiva 123 one, and there was no change in the portfolio.

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New coverage: SAM D20 and SiliconLabs SiM3

15

Dec

2013

Welcome to the last update of the year!

With the ramp down of the year and festivities approaching fast,
we are not seeing the heavy announcements from last month but more tweaks to existing portfolios.

 

Atmel
We are adding the SAM D20 to our portfolio this month with 60 products. The Cortex M0+-based SAM D20 is a low end 16-256kB Flash MCU designed for industrial and consumer applications. The D20 starts at $1.02 for 1ku of the 16KB Flash 32 pin package.

 

Freescale

A few new products in the K20- USB MCUfamily (USB, 50MHz) went public this month:

  • PK21DN512VMB5
  • PK21DX256VMB5
  • PK22DN512VLH5
  • PK22DN512VLK5
  • PK22DN512VMB5
  • PK22DX256VLF5
  • PK22DX256VLH5
  • PK22DX256VLK5
  • PK22DX256VMB5

NXP

NXP sparingly expanded its portfolio this month in the LPC11E and U familes (Cortex-M0 50MHz)

NXP touts the software-driven I/O Handler as well as “Software libraries available for the I/O Handler include I2S, I2C, UART, CRC, threshold ADC conversion, and DMA functionality.”

  • LPC11E37HFBD64/401
  • LPC11U14FHN33F
  • LPC11U24UK
  • LPC11U37HFBD64/401
  • LPC11U67JBD48
  • LPC11U68JBD100
  • LPC11U68JBD64

Renesas

After a fury of activities last month, Renesas EEG is virtually flat with no product or price change sighted.

 

SiliconLabs

We are initiating our coverage of the Precision 32 SiM3 family. It is composed of 3 groups (48 devices total):

It will be interesting to see how both the SiM3 and the recently acquired EFM32 will evolve, knowing there is some good level of overlap.

ST Microelectronics

ST introduced 5 new products this month, all higher temp (-40 +105C) versions of existing products:

  • STM32F051C6T7
  • STM32F205VET7
  • STM32F302RBT7
  • STM32F303RBT7
  • STM32F407IGT7

At the same time, 12 products were removed, all with the A suffix (non-optimized die) signifying the end of the first batches of these products. The products affected were in the STM32L151 and 152 families.

Texas Instruments

9 new products emerged this month in the Tiva camp with one in the C129 family (Ethernet PHY), the XM4C129ENCPDTI2.

On the MSP430 side, 4 products emerged: MSP430TCH5EPW, MSP430TCH5EPWR, MSP430TCH5ERHBR and MSP430TCH5ERHBT.

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