Semiconductor Products Insight

Atmel
After the nice announcement of the partnership on the Cortex-M7 architecture, things have cooled off a bit. Jacko Wilbrink (Senior Product Marketing Director for Cortex A and M7 products)) , has confirmed their M7 is out of the fab with one customer using it while another batch will follow in Q1-15.

There were a few new products, but don’t get excited too fast, these were just R (reel) or MRL (Marketing Revision Level) B variants of existing products.
ATSAM4S16CA-CFNR, ATSAM4S8BA-ANR, ATSAM4S8CA-ANR, ATSAMG53G19B-UUT, ATSAMG53G19B-AU

On the price front, the portfolio experienced a few changes summarized here:

• SAM3N4: positive
• SAM3S1: positive
• SAM3U: positive
• SAM3X: positive
• SAMD20G18: positive

Freescale
Same cool off period at FSL after the M7 release last month, but a few products were nevertheless silently released. Most were new packages of existing die, with an interesting WLCSP 142 pins.

• MK22FN256VMP12: MAPBGA 64
• MK22FN512VMP12: MAPBGA 64
• MK24FN1M0CAJ12R: WLCSP 142
• MK60DN256VMC10: MAPBGA 100
• MK64FN1M0CAJ12R: WLCSP 142

The motor control MKV has been beefed up with new combinations of package and frequency.

• MKV30F128VFM10
• MKV30F128VLH10
• MKV30F64VFM10
• MKV30F64VLH10
• MKV31F256VLH12
• MKV31F512VLH12

On the price side at the FSL web site, the MKW21D256/512VHA5 got a price decrease of ~ 15% while the MKW22D512VHA5 dropped by over 20%. The MKW01Z128CHN got a 13% price increase.

NXP
While NXP did not display any price changes, it announced at Electronica the new LPC54100 family based on a Cortex-M4 core augmented by a Cortex-M0+ on some versions of the family members.
NXP claims a 20% improvement of power consumption compared to a single core solution which will be very difficult to verify.
Here is a run down of the main features:

• Dual-core M4+M0+ (54101) or Single core M4 (54102) 100 MHz
• 512/256 kB Flash
• 3 uA power down with RAM retention
• Cortex-M0+ (55 uA/MHz)
• Cortex-M4F (100 uA/MHz)
• ADC 12 chan, 12 bits
• -40 to +105C
• 1.62 to 3.6 V
• WLCSP49 (3.28 x 3.28 mm), LQFP64 (10 x 10 mm)

8 Devices were released:

• LPC54101 with 512 or 256 kB Flash and LQFP64 or WLCSP49
• LPC54102 with 512 or 256 kB Flash and LQFP64 or WLCSP49

Renesas
Renesas released 18 parts in the Smart Analog RL78 MCU family RL78/G1E.

These are 32MHz MCU with built-in analog front-end (AFE) for sensor applications. The AFE includes amplifiers, filters, A/D and D/A converters, a temperature sensor.
In the RX200, 9 new products were also released, they are mostly 105C max temperature versions of existing devices.

Renesas experienced no price change.

SiliconLabs
SiLabs has started to change its product nomenclature for its Leopard Gecko family. The original part numbering was:
EFM32LG230F128-QFN64, now morphing into EFM32LG230F128G-E-QFN64.

60 products morphed so far in the LG family and 3 new ones were added (the LG360 family).
In the WG (Wonder Gecko) family, 3 new products were introduced, the same WG360 sub-family as for the LG. In both cases, this is a CSP 81 variant.
No other changes observed.

ST Microelectronics
On the price front there were substantial price changes on the F105 sub-family with price decreases of 50%. The F207VCT7 experienced the same fate while the F407ZET7 got a 36% price decrease.
The only parts with a noticeable price increase (~ +5%) were the F051C8T7 and the F217IG.
16 new parts appeared on the STM web site, and counting out the TR versions of existing part numbers, we are left with mostly UFBGA 169 versions of existing parts

• STM32F427AGH6, STM32F427AIH6, STM32F427AIH6U: UFBGA 169 package
• STM32F429AGH6, STM32F429AIH6: UFBGA 169 package
• STM32F437AIH6: UFBGA 169 package
• STM32F439AIH6: UFBGA 169 package
• STM32L062K8U6: UFQFPN 32 version
• STM32L151CBT6D, STM32L151CBU6D, STM32L151RBT6D: new silicon revision

Texas Instruments
TI released new FRAM versions of its popular MSP430 architecture. The FR2032 and FR413 saw additional FRAM and RAM configurations.
There were no changes for Tiva and no price changes either.