*Opinions* re: MCU vendors

Hi,

I'm looking at a couple of different parts from Atmel and TI for an upcoming design. I'd appreciate comments (not *rants*) folks might have about both firms in terms of:

- quality of their products

- accuracy of their documentation

- ability to meet commitments

- responsiveness during the design process etc.

I often have to approach vendors as a "one man shop" during product development with production buys done by clients

And, I tend to use devices in unusual ways :> So, I tend to end up digging around in dark corners of implementations uncovering things that they didn't expect (or *know*) would ever occur. This is particularly important nowadays when everything is spec'ed with "typical" numbers and damn few "worst case" numbers ("Yikes! The power supply went into current limit! I guess the *real* power consumption is considerably more than the 'typ' figures you guys published...")

I.e., I don't want to waste time with firms that are either slow to respond to *highly* technical inquiries (in the past, I've had face-to-faces with the actual designers of many components that I've "stetched" in unusual ways) or simply brush them off thinking it's not worth their time/effort (Motogorilla has lost *many* designs over the years on account of this).

Thanks!

--don

Hey, DonY,

I've had good results with TI over the years, somwhat less so with the other guys, and have seen a bit more tendency to chase big markets at the cost of wider markets, and obsolete parts from them as well.

If it's ARM you're looking at, I like Luminary, and even more so now that TI owns them.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I have had reasonable dealings with TI. I have stumped then on several occations as well and had to find a workaround.

You might also look at Microchip. Good dealings with them as well.

Any experience in this respect with the NXP ARM parts?

John

More info?

TI's brain isn't connected to any one of its hands. ...or anything else, for that matter. It's amazing how many people in one company can apologize for past sins and then sit on their hands as the nightmare continues. See also: Maxim

Yeah, it took us three years to pile enough workarounds on to get the product out the door. TI is right at the top of our s*it-list.

They've been fine. At least their stuff works as advertised and the specs useful.

(1) They claim to have a built in debugging ability. When you read more you discover that it requires things like the serial port.

(2) Some issue about the timing that I can't remember right now.

That's strange. No JTAG?

Oh, that's always the killer. ;-)

Unless you miss some nasty errata like I did the other week:

Dave.

We've had supply problems recently with the LPC2888 on our second production run after speccing it into a design. A few niggly problems with the port timings too so the softies tell me.

Dave.

It's always possible to miss errata (particularly if you don't look) but it's quite another thing to have the vendor lie to you, then ignore you, and when finally cornered cop a "sucks to be you" attitude. No, Microchip hasn't been guilty of that.