Freescale is to finsh development of its 8bit and 16bit microcontrollers with a pin compatible 32bit version is coming into production for the same cost.
Freescale will be shipping its 32bit Kinetis L series microcontrollers using the ARM M0+ Flycatcher core for a little as 30¢ in volume later this year with the same pinout as the 8bit devices. The only area where 8bit development continues is for EMC and ESD protected devices, and there are already test versions of the M0+ devices.
"Once you have an M0+ that's 100% compatible then it doesn't make sense to do antoerh 8bit device and that will be in the next 6 to 9 months," said Geoff Lees, general manager of the industrial and multi-market microcontroller division at Freescale. "For standard devices I can't see any rationale for 8 and 16bit development continuing."
"The products will continue in manufacturing for a long time but I can't see us doing any more serious product development," he said.
Freescale is aiming to move customers over to the 32bit versions with a 'lite' version of the MQX real time operating system. This currently runs in flash but a ROM version is in development that will allow the smalled 8bit-compatible devices to run an RTOS and still have room for applicaiton code.
"The ecosystem is the drving factor," said Lees. "32bit open source software and supprting productivity tools are more an dmore tuned for the ARM IDE development environment. It's going to be very hard for 8bit tool vendros to keep the tools economically up to date."