treborlecs
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I’m currently looking to specify two MCUs for an automotive application. The first will be driving an small OLED and the second will be driving solenoids (and some other duties). Both connected via CAN. Normally I would use an ARM based MCU (familiarity and tools) but apart from a single TI CM3, 99% are not automotive qualified / have the temperature range.
After lots of searching Freescale seems to be the dominant provider and an S12 / MPC560/2P combination seems to fit the requirements. The tool cost for Freescale seem to be pretty high, although ‘special ’ versions of CodeWarrier seem to be listed as ‘Free’ – not sure what that means? Free with dev kits? That may mean that I use two of the same despite extra costs incurred.
Microchip also provide dsPIC33 which seem competitive but they don’t seem to have some of the robustness features; ECC memory for one. Also I’ve read that the FLASH write cycles can be very low although I didn’t notice it on a previous project. The product won’t be large volumes (x100 at most) Does anyone have any experience with Freescale products when compared to Microchip for automotive applications? Freescale MCUs, apart from some of the S12’s don’t seem to be available from suppliers (digikey, mouser…etc). Also the performance of the S12 may be a small concern, especially when compared to the dsPICs.
Any general advice would be appreciated.
After lots of searching Freescale seems to be the dominant provider and an S12 / MPC560/2P combination seems to fit the requirements. The tool cost for Freescale seem to be pretty high, although ‘special ’ versions of CodeWarrier seem to be listed as ‘Free’ – not sure what that means? Free with dev kits? That may mean that I use two of the same despite extra costs incurred.
Microchip also provide dsPIC33 which seem competitive but they don’t seem to have some of the robustness features; ECC memory for one. Also I’ve read that the FLASH write cycles can be very low although I didn’t notice it on a previous project. The product won’t be large volumes (x100 at most) Does anyone have any experience with Freescale products when compared to Microchip for automotive applications? Freescale MCUs, apart from some of the S12’s don’t seem to be available from suppliers (digikey, mouser…etc). Also the performance of the S12 may be a small concern, especially when compared to the dsPICs.
Any general advice would be appreciated.
