RF, software and Rock’n roll
25
Mar
2016
With South by Southwest behind us, beyond the Rock’n roll, the interactive part left us with the feeling that less and less of our lives will be left unmonitored. SoftBank emotion-sensing robot now connects to IBM Watson ecosystem to better understand you, while Neuroon – the first intelligent sleep mask (sic) – wants you to sleep better. A common theme: a host of crazy ideas competiting for our attention where connetivity is a must. The next Google or Amazon is in the making, the semiconductor world is a the heart of it with interesting trends.
We are adding a new announcement bit to our newsletter to keep our readers abreast of new development at Keremi. Next month, we will add a few manufacturers and product lines to our portfolio.
This move answers customer demands in a few areas of the market.
First, with the rise of the industrial internet, there is a constant need for connectivity, wireless in particular to bridge the gap between the field (think sensors and actuators on the production floor or embedded in equipment) and the intelligence (think server farms and AI). You probably haven’t escaped the plethora of alliances and consortia vying to address the connectivity problem – aka how does sensor/actuator from manufacturer X talks to intelligence back end from company Y). As standards progress, and you can already see a few, we will experience more integration on the silicon. Remember GSM in 1995, when our cell phones counted 10s if not 100s of components? Years later, radio, power management and application are integrated into a few components. This trend is already happening with MCU and RF. So starting in April, we will cover integrated MCU+RF components from Dialog Semiconductor, Nordic Semiconductor, Qualcomm, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. Our data will show protocols and RF bands supported as well as some element of power consumption for the RF function.
Second, the industrial internet will happen thank to security. More MCUs are integrating crypto accelerators: a lot of value… at a cost. We will provide more details to the algorithms whether they are AES or SHA.
Finally, field equipment needs to communicate with humans, if only to provide status information. One effective way is LCD displays. Whether these are graphical or segment has impact on the value provided. We will track more precisely starting in April.
That’s all for this month.
There were 17 new products in the D20, SAM4E families, all of themm revision B of existing silicon.
Atmel also launched the ATTiny102 and 104: 1kB Flash, 32 Bytes SRAM, 5-chan 10b ADC. The 104 offers a larger package.
The ATUC03 family is shrinking with 10 products lost, while the ATMEGA16H and ATMEGA8H have been pulled out. They were a monitoring and protection circuit for 1-cell and 2-cell Li-ion applications with focus on high security/authentication, accurate monitoring, low cost and high utilization of the cell energy with secure authentication features. Maybe a lost opportunity?
Infineon had no changes this month.
Microchip added close to 200 products:
The DSPI33EV gained new packages, so did the PIC(L)F171x
Most of the activity however happened with the PIC32MZ who got many new package and temperature options, in all 168 on top of the 252 existing.
Beyond a few datasheet updates, Nuvoton had no product change this month.
This month, the MKL got 2 new part numbers with WLCSP package while the MKV3x, the motor control family, started to add software to its offering in the form of a bundle. Dubbed KMS (Kinetis Motor Suite), the software enables the rapid configuration of BLDC and PMSM motor drive systems. The markup is $0.41@10k for the MKV31F256VLH12 that is initially $2.06: the KMS seems like a critical piece of the puzzle.
This follows an interesting trends that Renesas is part of with its Synergy platform. The customers are proposed silicon and software IP in exchange for a higher recurring price. That saves them the hassle of shopping for software and doing the risky and lenghly integration themselves. Shorter time to market but a slightly higher cost $4,100 for 10k, not a bad deal at this volume.
The LPC18xx and LPC43xx got P suffixes unfortunately, they do not come with documentation we could find.
Finally, the LPC54 family welcomed the new LPC541xx Cortex-M4-based 100MHz series:
– LPC54101-LPC54113: Cortex-M4
– LPC54102-LPC54114: Cortex-M4+Cortex-M0+
5 devices were announced.
Both RX and RL78 portfolio were stable.
Silicon Labs EFM8 and EFM32 were quiet this month.
Spansion was quiet this month.
ST released 12 products, mostly TR versions of existing parts.
TI launched the “world’s first microcontroller with a configurable low-leakage transimpedance amplifier” aka the MSP430FR231x. The new MCU is deemed to offer “20 times lower leakage than alternative voltage and current sensing solutions” according to TI. The MSP430FR231x comes in 12 flavors with 16MHz, 2 or 3.75kB of Flash in TSSOP or VQFN packages.
It’s already spring!
23
Feb
2016
This was already spring time for new products that sprouted out like blue bonnets in Texas! ST fired the opening salvo low to the ground with the STM32L0x1 – a sub-dollar series – and into the sky with the STM32F7. Nuvoton put its Cortex-M4 into production while NXP and Infineon added new strings to their bow. Renesas, not to be left behind announced new motor control products and a low end RX230. If you need to make sense of all this, please contact us on twitter or just here.
There were 41 new products at Atmel in the 3N, D, E7 and S7 families. The SAM3N got new parts that can be found at the ditribution, but not on the Atmel site, namely the ATSAM3N2 and 4. These are 128/256 kB Flash variants of the N3. The D10 got a new WLCSP package (ATSAMD10D14A-UUT) while the D20 got BGA (-CN parts). The E70 added VFBGA (-CFN) and thw E70 VQFN and VFBGA (-MN and -CFN respectively).
It was also interesting to see the V70 and V71 portfolios lose the QFN options.
There were no changes for AVR-based MCUs.
Infineon modestly launched the XMC4300, a lower end Ether-cat based 144MHz Cortex-M4 family. There were only 2 part numbers released with 2 temperature grades: -40 to +85C and -40 to +125C.
Microchip was in a pruning mode this month with 14 part numbers removed, from one DSPIC33FJ to 9 PIC16F/LF parts and a few others.
Beyond a few datasheet updates, Nuvoton had all its M451/2/3 families getting into full production. Expect more competition on the Chinese market.
There were a couple dozen new parts at NXP on the LPC side. We are seeing more of these mysterious parts for the LPC18 familes, with /CP33xx suffixes as well as the launch of the LPC40xx. The latter is a 120MHz, 85C, Cortex-M4 based family with 64 or 512kB of Flash with USB FS Host/Device. Compared to the other devices in the LPC4 realm, it features a single core and lower frequency and Flash size – except for the Flashless LPC43xx.
Renesas has strenghtned its motor control portfolio with no less than 64 additional RX62T and RX63T more than doubling the previous part count. These were mostly +105C versions. It also launched the RX230 a de-featured general purpose RX231 with no USB/CAN and SD card interface for the low cost general purpose market, in all 24 parts.
On the RL78 front there were 4 new R5F11C products part of the application specific RL78/I1x family.
Silicon Labs was quiet this month
Spansion was quiet this month.
ST has a festival of new products this month with no less than 141 part numbers from the high end to the low power type. Starting with the high end, ST beefed up its Cortex-M7 portfolio with 17 new products, adding new packages to the lower en 745 and 746, creating the F7x7 and F7x9 families with JPEG codec and MIPI DSI interfaces.
On the low power high performance STM32L4, 33 products appeared to cover the lower end with lower flash densities and/or no USB connectivity.
Finally, on the ultra low end, there was a nice push with the addition or 85 products, most of which were focused on less-featured parts – no DAC, touch, segment LCD or RNG. The lowest price point on the L0 family is now set at USD 0.587/10ku for the STM32L11D3P6, a 32MHz Cortex-M0+ with 8/2/0.5kB of Flash/RAM/EEPROM and a 12-bit ADC.
TI was quiet this month on the MSP430, Tiva and C28 fronts.
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