ARM wrestling at the top of MCUs
16
Feb
2015
After the top of the line Cortex-M7 announcements of recent months, Renesas is retaliating with the release of its full portfolio of 240MHz-1,056-Coremarks RXv2 parts. With all the bells and whistles – Ethernet, USB HS, Encryption, 4MB Flash, CAN, it is well equipped to fight Atmel, Freescale and ST’s Cortex-M7 devices. Or is it? ARM claims a whooping 5 Coremark/MHz and ST already offers a 200MHz part while Atmel already has 67 300MHz Cortex-M7 ATSAM7.
Cortex-M7 parts seems to lag behind Renesas in Flash integration though with “only” 2MB. Will we see high frequency RXv2 soon at Renesas? The MCUs are moving up market and are starting to encroach into the application processor segment, it will be an interesting year.
After much emotions last month (remember the freshly baked Cortex-M7 SAME7x,S7x and V7x), Atmel just released more parts in the low end SAMD1x family. In all, 11 parts with that same Cortex-M0+ at 48MHz were released. The D10.13 embeds 8kB of Flash and 4kB RAM while the SAMD10.14 bumps up the Flash size to 16kB. The C version has fewer ADC and pins than its D counterpart.
On the price front, the portfolio had only a few minor changes in the ATSAM4 family.
Spring is coming at Freescale and we can already feel some cleanup… The PK (Prototype) devices are almost gone (32 products removed), with the exception of the PK10. On the other end, 45 products appeared, alas, these were mostly R suffixes, i.e. reel packing option. The only exception was the MK22DN512VDC5/(R), a variant of the 50MHz Cortex-M4. FSL web site is a bit short on details, except for the 121 pin count, and the product brief doesn’t mention the DC package…
Nothing happened for FSL prices this month.
Hmm, four months since any product was announced at NXP. Is something new cooking? An M7 beast, or a multi-processor engine that only NXP can create?
Pricewise, there was no change.
Renesas released all the Rx71M described in the roadmap at once, what a feast! See below (source Renesas) for a complete view of the family.
This is heavyduty equipment with at least 2MB of Flash, 240MHz – 1,056 CoreMark.
On the RL78 front, the new RL78/I1D family targeted at the detectors and sensors market was launched with 13 new products. Here is the lineup (source: Renesas).
Renesas experienced very limited price changes.
We are getting beyond desperate about SiLabs Cortex portfolio…
No price change either.
37 products became public this month across the board. Most were variations of existing products. The following families were updated:
- STM32F030 (2)
- STM32F070/71 (6)
- STM32F215 (1)
- STM32F302/3 (20)
- STM32F398 (1)
- STM32F4 (4)
- STM32L1 (3)
ST price changes focused on the STM32F091 and STM32F217 (-6 to -14%) while a few F031/51 and F405/7 parts enjoyed a refreshing +10%.
TI was quiet this month with no move on Tiva beyond the TM4C123GH6ZXR getting in production and only one MSP430 part – XMS430FR6972IPMR – added.
It was very quiet on the price front too.
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