Entering the migration and acquisition season
31
Jan
2017
The new year starts with a pretty heavy migration of MCU products from Atmel to Microchip with PICs and AVRs sharing the same domain name. Who would have known?
QCOM on its end made one more step toward the acquisition of NXP when its shareholders granted NXP approval for the QCOM proposal. There are many more steps before the final acquisition planned to take place before the end of this year. Enjoy the ride.
We are now seeing the Atmel portfolio on both the Atmel and the Microchip sites. No changes to Atmel portfolio.
No changes to Dialog.
Infineon spinned rev 2 of the XMC1302T038X0064ABXUMA and XMC4400F100K512ABXQMA.
Microchip has started to include the AVR and the rest of the Atmel portfolio as we were indexing the MCHP portfolio. It somehow feels weird to see side by side the ATSAM (Cortex-M) and the PIC32 (MIPS4K). Interestingly enough, the AVR is only mentioned once under 8-bit while drowned by every single PIC flavor. See for yourself here.
No change this month.
No change this month.
LPC800 and LPC54xx families are now top of the fold on the main page for the LPC group of MCUs. NXP released more information on its LPC54xxx family including 31 new part numbers.
These can be split into 2 times 2 sets.
The first dimension is whether the part has security peripherals (AES256, SHA1/2) – the LPC54S – and the second is the level of performance from low LPC54(S)10x @100MHz with no USB or Ethernet to high LPC54(S)60x @180MHz with USB HS + PHY and Ethernet and CAN/CAN-FD. Both sport a Cortex-M4 with FPU and MPU.
No change this month.
Silicon Labs EFM8 had no new product.
We discovered 3 EFM32 parts that were hiding due to errors on the Pearl Gecko main page. The order part numbers are erroneous there for these products: EFM32PG1B100F256IM32-C0,
EFM32PG1B200F256IM32-C0 and EFM32PG1B200F256IM48-C0. These are all 40MHz Cortex-M4 that have a temperature grade of -40 to 125C.
6 new products appeared this month, 3x S6E1xxx parts – 40MHz Cortex-M0+ with new package combinations and 3x CY8C4 parts – CY8C4145LQI-S423, CY8C4244FNI-443T, CY8C4124FNI-443T.
STM8 saw 5 new parts in the STM8AF52/62 and STM8AL3 families.
ST did a bit of clean up this month and removed about 20 products in the STM32L0x1 family.
These were somewhat offset by 12 new products, mostly in the STM32F families, including 3 Cortex-M7 parts in high temp grade (+105C).
The big hitters were in the MSP430FR59 this month with no less than 22 new parts adding more combination of packages, pin counts and FRAM sizes. No change detected for the other families.
Will 2017 match the disruptive 2016?
31
Dec
2016
Happy new year to our readers! 2016 was a disruptive year with lots of acquisitions in the MCU segment. Even though some valuations are high, small semiconductor companies that offer differentiation are plenty: SLAB, Ambiq Micro, Nordic Semi to name a few. In 2017, we will also watch for more MCUs with integrated RF, how 32-bit MCUs will continue to steal share from the bottom (8-bit), and how it will increase its penetration of the hot automotive market.
No change this month.
Infineon had no updates this month.
Microchip continues to add parts to its low cost 32-bit PIC32MM with the lowest cost parts of the family. From the PIC32MM0016GPL028T-I/M6 ($0.84/5k 16/4kB of Flash/RAM) to the PIC32MM0064GPL036T-I/MV ($1.12/5k 64/8kB of FLash/RAM), 22 products were added. It will be interesting to see how they compare with the LPC800 family, see below.
No change this month.
There were no changes at NXP. NXP released its roadmap for the LPC800 and LPC54. The LPC800 will go closer to the 8 bit segment with lower frequencies (15 MHz) and smaller Flash memory – 16 kB while the LPC54 will see Flash and Flashless versions of its Cortex-M4 running at 180MHz.
No change this month.
Silicon Labs EFM8 had 8 new products in the busy bee and sleepy bee families. All of them are Automotive grade version of existing parts.
The EFM32 had 25 parts with a new silicon revision, mostly Happy Gecko and Jade Gecko. Like its small cousin, the Jade Gecko got 3 parts with automotive qualification.
Spansion was quiet this month.
ST ad only minor releases with extended temperatures or tape and reel extensions, 11 new parts in total.
TI gave birth to 7 new Delfino (TMS28377D), the dual core flavor, running at 200 MHz. These are all pricey parts, above $17@1ku.
| Sign up for our newsletter |