Nuvoton going direct after TI and Microchip
30
Nov
2016
As the semiconductor concentrates, we are experiencing another trend. Have you seen efforts by TI and now Nuvoton to provide full shopping cart experiences? This is no news to veterans like Microchip, but as more users get an Amazon-like experience from their semiconductor suppliers, what will become of our current “household” distributor names: Digikey, Mouser, Arrow, Avnet and all the others? Food for thoughts as we get closer to 2017, a likely disruptive year.
Atmel added a few Tiny(ies) to its AVR army. The 20MHz 4kB Flash ATTiny417 comes in 2 packages while the 814/6/7 add 4kB Flash and touch logic with respectively 14/20/24 pins.
No change for the Smart ARM family.
No change this month.
Infineon has no change.
Microchip added a couple of packages to the PCI16(L)F1707 and another 50 products to the PIC24FJxxxGA7 (64, 128 and 256 kB of Flash) with a 32MHz 8-bit CPU and 2 to 3.6V power supply range.
No change at Nordic this month.
No change at Nuvoton this month.
NXP is getting closer by the day to its acquisition by QCOM. No new products were found.
No significant change to the portfolio this month.
Silicon Labs EFM8 and EFM32 portfolios were quiet this month.
We added the PSoC4 and PSoC5 families to our watch list this month with 276 products. We are still busy working on it but will have more insight next month.
44 new products appeared this month at ST in the F413/423 families. These are 90nm, Cortex-M4 devices with 1 or 1.5MB Flash and up to 320 kB RAM. The 423 is essentially the same as the 413 with hardware cryptographic functions.
TI was quiet this month.
QCOM to gobble NXP and burning 400MHz
31
Oct
2016
As we mentioned last month: “Are the semiconductor companies busy buying each other?”, we certainly got a definite YES from Qualcomm and NXP even though the deal is not completely sealed. As the growth for traditional cellular market stalls, QCOM sees an opportunity in automotive and IoT markets, NXP strongholds. As these mega-mergers happen, the survival of smaller standalone companies is certainly getting harder.That did not prevent one of the MCU leaders – STMicroelectronics – to announce yet another record, this time a 400MHz Cortex-M7 running with as low as 280uA/MHz. Can’t wait to see more innovations!
We found a few new package for the SAMC20J and SAMC21J (WLCSP) and other minor packing adds. No change for the AVR family.
No change this month.
Infineon rolled out 13 new products with undocumented suffixes in the XMC4400/02 area. Last time it was to tweak thermal resistance and physical dimensions.
Microchip added 48 products primarily launching a new sub-family, the PIC16(L)F163xx. It ranges from 3.5 to 28kB of program memory and 0.5 to 2kB of RAM with a 32MHz 8-bit CPU running from 1.8 to 5.5V.
No change at Nordic this month.
No change at Nuvoton this month.
In the midst of its acquisition by Qualcomm, NXP released 20 products in the Kinetis E family (5-volt) to address the high electrical noise segments. The KE1xZ sports a 72MHz Cortex-M0+ with 128-256 kB of Flash and 16/32kB of RAM in 64 or 100-pin LQFP packages while the KE1xF ups its cousin with a 168MHz Cortex-M4 and double the amount of aforementioned memory.
The RL78/L1A family (6 parts) was introduced to address the healthcare and home appliances markets. It embeds a segment LCD controller, has enhanced analog peripherals (12-bit ADC and DAC, comparators), up to 12kB of Flash and comes in 80-pin and 100-pin LFQFP packages.
The RL78/G11 line-up focuses on 20 to 25-pin packages and small (16kB) flash as well as analog peripherals such as ADC/DAC and comparators. The packages are 3x3mm² WFLGA , 4x4mm² HWQFN and standard 20pin LSSOP.
The RX side did not rest either this month with 96 new devices. These two new groups, the RX65N (Ethernet) and RX651 (no Ethernet) feature the RXv2 core at 120MHz, 256kB of RAM, AES encryption, and connectivity: USB, CAN, SD host/slave interface, and quad SPI.
Silicon Labs EFM8 and EFM32 portfolios were quiet this month.
No changes were found this month.
67 new products appeared this month at ST and most interstingly, a new very high performance family emerged, the STM32H7.
The first devices (STM32H743) feature a whooping 400MHz Cortex-M7 burning way past the Atmel SAME7/SAMV7/SAMS7 300MHz and NXP MKV5 240MHz equivalents. ST used its 40nm process to keep run mode consumption below 280uA/MHz and 7uA in stand-by.
Industrial gateways, home automation, telecom equipment and smart consumer products, as well as high-performance motor controls, domestic appliances, and small devices with rich user interfaces will benefit from the beast.
The product family embeds 2MB Flash with a large 1MB RAM as well as L1 cache and TCM memory. There is also a nice list of peripherals including CAN FD, SDCARD (4.1), SDIO (4.0), and MMC (5.0). The STM32H743VGT6 with 1MB Flash and 1MB SRAM in a LQPF100 package starts at $8.17/10ku.
A handful of MSP430 products appeared in the F2619 and FG4250 families while the rest of the portfolio was quiet.
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