Boot loaders in Microcontrollers

A stupid answer: Yes.

SCNR Michael

Yes, e.g. Philips LPC2000 series

Does this mean that if I order 50000units the boot loader is already in?

Thank you very much for answering such questions

There are several micros including from NXP (Philips) , Atmel and many others that have boot loaders in ROM from quantities of 1 upwards.

Some Atmel ones give you a choice of boot load via CAN. SPI, serial but I think if you want the non- default one you have to order a qualtity.

Ulf will probably correct me with more accurate information.

What wort of MCU do you need/want? Why do you want/need a pre installed boot loader?

I have a dev board with a Silicon Laboratories C8051F320 chip. I wonder if when buying chips the bootloader is preprogrammed or not. If there is no bootloader than I'll have to add programming port on the board I'm developing. But if the boot loader is preprogrammed than I'll use USB to program the firmware.

Add Maxim ( Ex Dallas 89c450- 8051 core). Nice and easy to use their bootloader.Atmel 89c51ED2( 51 core, 60Mhz!) also, but tricky getting into the boot loader... Both have app software to load your code via RS232 port(5V/3.3V) and the boot loader is a full feature of the device family.

I have a dev board with a Silicon Laboratories C8051F320 chip. I wonder if when buying chips the bootloader is preprogrammed or not. If there is no bootloader than I'll have to add programming port on the board I'm developing. But if the boot loader is preprogrammed than I'll use USB to program the firmware.

Might take a while via USB....

Even if the micro has pre-programmed boot loader, you should have hooks to reload the boot loader. Otherwise, you have to remove the chip to reload it, most likely, damaging the PCB.

I'll add that at least some variants of the ST10 do as well.

Why not ask Silicon labs?

That depends on the bootloader. They are not all eraseable. Actually none of the ones I've worked with have been but that's an admittedly restricted subset.

Robert

Unfortunately (or fortunately), the bootloaders I am dealing with are erasable. We almost never keep the bootloader in production chips. It's kind of silly to keep a 4K bootloader in an 8K chip, for example.

If you want to buy 50000 units and have fairly stable software (or your own bootloader), then any decent distributor will pre-program the microcontrollers for a reasonable price.

I think it's in ROM, not flash, on the Atmel ARM chips. Same for MSP430.

Eric

As are some of NXPs and Atmels ARMs. ST took it one step further with the ST10, the bootloader isn't even in the normal address space.

Robert

Bootloaders are chip specific, and you could add USB to that. With enough volume, you can order at least AVR & AVR32 chips factory programmed. The AT91 group will leave that business to disti's though.