Migrating to Texas Instruments ARM from STM32

[jealcuna]

So, I'm done.

I am taking the decision to change all my designs from stm32 to ti arm devices, looks like they are not suffering hard times with shortage situation. So, I would like to know if someone else also adventure in this journey.

[AaronLee]

So, I'm done.

I am taking the decision to change all my designs from stm32 to ti arm devices, looks like they are not suffering hard times with shortage situation. So, I would like to know if someone else also adventure in this journey.

I don't use any TI ARM CPUs in my current development, but just had a board that needed to be redesigned at the last moment due to a TI chip shortage of a non-cpu part. If you're going to change, you'd better be very sure the chips you need will be available and for a price that makes sense. Throughout the chip shortage the Microchip MCUs, which I have a love-hate relationship with, have had consistent availability for the parts I use, so at the moment I wouldn't consider changing vendors. I'm definitely not a Microchip fanboy, and admit there's lots of issues, especially with their software tools, but if I had a product with any MCU that I was currently having supply issues with, I'd first look to replace it with a Microchip part if feasible.

[jealcuna]

My first option was ATMEL MCU microchip. But I have seen many forums reporting shortage for this brand also. I don't like the pic architecture, and I hate the ide core in NetBeans. Also I prefer opensource compiler like GCC or SDCC. I have not checked arm microchip ics. Probably it is more friendly than pic. I definitely check microchip arm ics, thank you.

[jealcuna]

So I realize that Microchip bought atmel because the arm portfolio 

I am not sure if atmel arm ics are experimenting shortage also. 

[Bassman59]

So, I'm done.

I am taking the decision to change all my designs from stm32 to ti arm devices, looks like they are not suffering hard times with shortage situation. So, I would like to know if someone else also adventure in this journey.

I did a couple of things in the TM4C1294. Decent chip. Tools (Eclipse of course) work well enough. The documentation and example code are actually useful so I was up and running quickly. The mix of peripherals is sorta weird (who really needs ten I2C ports?).

Oh, there's also the MSP432E devices, which are similar but not. Same 120 MHz M4 core and similar peripherals, and I can't really figure out why one would be preferred over the other. Expect some confusion when you try to work with the configurator thing.

[jealcuna]

So I am considering to use tm4 family, I am not decided a particular ic, but it looks promising.

I read in some place that TI owns complete supply chain for manufacturing ics, so it is basically the reason that they can keep producing chips.

[Jeroen3]

You need to be cautious if using non-jelly-bean TI parts because US customs may suddenly think you're not allowed anymore.
TI also has withdrawn from European distributors.
Overall, a choice you may want to consider more deeply if you not American.

ST's micro's are not available right now because ST doesn't own a fab for them and the fabs are just repeating last years allocations.

[RoGeorge]

TI also has withdrawn from European distributors.

Is this about Avnet?

I've googled "Texas Instruments withdrawn Europe" and could only find that TI don't use Avnet as distributor any more.  TI wants to manage distribution themselves eventually, and until then they still sell through redistributors like Mouser or Farnell almost everywhere in the world, including in Europe.

[magic]

List of authorized TI distributors
https://www.ti.com/ordering-resources/distributors.html

Semiconductor products purchased outside of TI’s authorized distribution network, including through brokers, independent distributors, or online marketplaces (sometimes referred to as the “gray market”), may be counterfeit, modified, beyond TI’s recommended shelf life, or improperly stored or handled. Accordingly, TI does not provide warranty coverage or customer support for semiconductor products purchased outside of TI’s authorized distribution network.

So Farnell is gray market now

Yes, they drank the vertical integration kool-aid.
Expect a TI store opening near your local Apple store by the end of the decade

[rsjsouza]

List of authorized TI distributors
https://www.ti.com/ordering-resources/distributors.html

Semiconductor products purchased outside of TI’s authorized distribution network, including through brokers, independent distributors, or online marketplaces (sometimes referred to as the “gray market”), may be counterfeit, modified, beyond TI’s recommended shelf life, or improperly stored or handled. Accordingly, TI does not provide warranty coverage or customer support for semiconductor products purchased outside of TI’s authorized distribution network.

So Farnell is gray market now

Farnell is owned by Avnet so I am pretty sure that they are not part of the list. The parts they have are probably their existing inventory - although some of the entries say they are in backorder, so I have no idea what may be going on there.

[magic]

Nothing. They are grey market vendors, like TME in Poland and the small electronics shop in my city. They buy, they sell.

[Bassman59]

TI also has withdrawn from European distributors.

Is this about Avnet?

I've googled "Texas Instruments withdrawn Europe" and could only find that TI don't use Avnet as distributor any more.  TI wants to manage distribution themselves eventually, and until then they still sell through redistributors like Mouser or Farnell almost everywhere in the world, including in Europe.

I ordered a couple of boards direct from TI as well as parts over the years. At first it was simple: place the order, parts arrive. But almost a year ago (Oct 2020) boards I ordered (an MSP432 board and a "boost packs") got hung up in some nonsense about "company name not on order." And the email from TI that first informed me of this looked to the spam filters like a phishing attempt! Seriously: terrible English, all of it.

What they did was to look at the "Company Name" field and the domain for the email address. The company name is simply my initials followed by the word "digital." The email address is an account on a domain I've owned for 25 years, so not gmail or yahoo, but it's not "my initials plus digital dot com." And their system is too fucking stupid to understand any of this.

I finally made a bitchy post on their E2E forum (which does have my real name). I got a personal message from someone in Texas almost immediately. I explained what I was doing (personal project stuff, day job employer uses TI parts everywhere, and I gave him the employer's name) and the skids were greased and the shipment was released.

I ordered a couple more things from TI in March of this year using the same user login and email and company name, and that went through immediately, without issue.

One more thing: that TI E2E forum has good support engineers. They're the first to say, "we don't know, we'll get back" and they do. One issue they come up against all the time is that TI Corporate doesn't seem to know what they want to do with the Tiva/MSP432 parts. For a long time there were no SDK updates and then there was one. I think part of it has to do with Tiva coming from Stellaris but MSP432 being home-grown.

That is as opposed to the NXP forum, which is utter nonsense and is an embarrassment.

[Doctorandus_P]

I once tried to buy a few Beagle bones from either mouser or digikey. and after more then a month they had not arrived and I finally had a closer look. It turned out the order was on hold because I had to promise I am not a terrorist.

So I cancelled the order and bought them somewhere else.

[magic]

Sounds like an admission of sorts

[Kjelt]

I would switch to the brand of microcontroller of which I had a whole real of in my storage.
So I don't know your volume of production but if you have no confirmed allocation for two years of production that is the first thing to do, then switch your design.

[moffy]

I like the TI ARM chips but love the NXP iMXRT10xx series. Some stock at Mouser. Very easy to migrate from one of the series to the other as they have very similar cores.

[aiq25]

One more thing: that TI E2E forum has good support engineers. They're the first to say, "we don't know, we'll get back" and they do. One issue they come up against all the time is that TI Corporate doesn't seem to know what they want to do with the Tiva/MSP432 parts. For a long time there were no SDK updates and then there was one. I think part of it has to do with Tiva coming from Stellaris but MSP432 being home-grown.

That is as opposed to the NXP forum, which is utter nonsense and is an embarrassment.

Local TI apps engineer told me TI has a points based system and they ear points when help engineers on the forums. They said I'm likely to get much faster response on the TI E2E forum (which is true!) because of this. Not sure what the points mean or what they do with it but yeah that's why it seems they are more responsive on the forum.

For the past 9 years I have always used TI as my first choice for stuff I needed and have received a lot of support from them but that was when I worked at larger companies. Now I'm working at a start up and the same people who helped me before dropped support. I found so many glaring mistakes in their datasheet's which they refused to fix until I posted it on the TI E2E forums. I was really disappointment with them because they provided me such great support over the years.

Microchip was my second choice but now they have become my first. They provide support no matter the size of the company. I know they have their shortcoming but the support I got/get from them is much better.

NXP has good products but from my experience is in the same thought process as TI, they don't like to provide much support if you are a small company.

[jealcuna]

Is the microchip support good enough with atmel products, or only for pic/dspic and other stuffs originally from mc?

I like AVR architecture, also the IDE and the open source compiler, but shortage keep me doubting.

[nctnico]

You need to be cautious if using non-jelly-bean TI parts because US customs may suddenly think you're not allowed anymore.
TI also has withdrawn from European distributors.

That is because they have their own distribution setup in the EU for over a decade. Ordering parts from TI directly works very well in my experience.

One more thing: that TI E2E forum has good support engineers. They're the first to say, "we don't know, we'll get back" and they do. One issue they come up against all the time is that TI Corporate doesn't seem to know what they want to do with the Tiva/MSP432 parts. For a long time there were no SDK updates and then there was one. I think part of it has to do with Tiva coming from Stellaris but MSP432 being home-grown.

That is as opposed to the NXP forum, which is utter nonsense and is an embarrassment.

NXP does have good support through their forum. If there are unclarities in a datasheet, you need extra information or a reference design, then the NXP forum is a good place to ask. There is a lot more information & documentation available than NXP has on their website; the support engineers on the forum will send these to you by email. But you have to choose a good subject title and explain your problem clearly.

[moffy]

I must agree with nctnico, the NXP forums are quite useful, I have done quite a bit of work with the RT1010, RT1020 and RT1052 and though I have struggled never been totally stuck. Their code examples are quite prolific and generally of very good quality. Though the same can be said for TI, but it is the NXP processors that set them apart, a 500MHz M7 core in the iMXRT1010 for a couple of dollars.

[aiq25]

Is the microchip support good enough with atmel products, or only for pic/dspic and other stuffs originally from mc?

I like AVR architecture, also the IDE and the open source compiler, but shortage keep me doubting.

I never had to contact Microchip for AVR, only Microchip products. I would assume they would support AVR as well as their original stuff but not sure.

[EugenioN]

TI's flavoured Eclipse (aka code composer rev. whatsoever) is a complete mess of spaghetti libraries/code/packages.

St (and Nxp) developement tools are quite a consistent ecosystem, with simple library management inside every project folder.

TI choose a complicated pile of external references, precompiled libraries and command line tools you need to understand (=debug and fix) and keep organized. Code composer also is incline to projects corruption and unexpected quirks you need to master over time. And the *do* change when any update is installed.

Support is almost non existent: community forum based.

My two cents.

[rsjsouza]

Interesting how experiences can differ. However, are you talking about the IDE itself (Code Composer) or the whole software dev ecosystem (IDE, toolchains, SDKs, etc)?
The IDE itself is pretty much the same across the various device families (from MSP430 to those monster Sitara and Jacinto SoCs) and supports quite the variety of toolchains (Clang, Gcc, the in-house compiler) and their own TI-RTOS and FreeRTOS - what differs heavily are the SDKs across the board.

[VK3DRB]

TI is a bit of basket case. However I did change a design from an ST Micro to an MSP430 variant, because STM has no parts and has earned zero credibility as a supplier. The MSP430 is a bit agricultural and Code Composer is not great compared to some other IDEs, but it is a good reasonably low cost device.

But try and get buck and boost converters and other TI chips that were once commonplace, and you will be out of luck. Great chips, lousy planning.

One customer of mine found stocks of a TI boost converter, via a contact in China. Dated 2014 (NOS). He has little choice but to use them. By the way, look online at the cost of gaming graphics cards online and you will the prices have skyrocketed and many cards are discontinued or no ETA. The industry is in crisis, and the spin by PR people at the chip manufacturers seems to not reflect reality.

[pope]

Sorry to resurrect this thread but has anyone in EU placed an order directly from TI? If so, did you get hit by custom fees, etc.. or the price shown is the total price?