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?

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 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.

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

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:

• Access line (March)
• USB line (March)
• USB/LCD line (now): STM32L0x3 (x=5 no AES, x=6 AES)

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.

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