STM32 - STM8 Aerospace ?

[Leo Leo]

Posted on April 11, 2017 at 08:27

Hi

Does anyone know if there are STM32 or STM8 availaible for aerospace apps ? I saw there were the RCP series for aerospace and defense apps ... but they are too much 'high-performance' for my app.

Thank you ! Have a nice day.

[Simon V.]

Posted on April 14, 2017 at 16:34

Hi,

- Thank you for your question. Could you please  what are you expecting from RCP series ?

- Which kind of application do you plan to develop ?

Regarding STM8 we have a automotive grade family (wide temperature range) : STM8AF and STM8AL (low power)

http://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers/stm8af-series.html?querycriteria=productId=SS1583

 

and

http://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers/stm8al-series.html?querycriteria=productId=SS1584

 

We have discovery boards to help you starting your application.

http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/evaluation-tools/product-evaluation-tools/mcu-eval-tools/stm8-mcu-eval-tools/stm8-mcu-eval-boards/stm8a-discovery.html

 

Please feel free if you have any question,

Kind regards,

Simon

[Andrei Chichak]

Posted on April 15, 2017 at 18:27

The answer depends on what you are doing.

If you are working on an interstellar probe, you should probably get something that is radiation hardened like the RAD750, it costs a little more than an STM8, but your project probably should be able to absorb $200,000 for a single processor board. It's pretty ridiculous to put all of those years of effort and millions of dollars of budget into a processor that gets destroyed by the radiation 3 minutes after launch.

If it is a defence project, then the government will probably tell you which processors you can use. Or you're working for a very large company in the military industrial complex and your tech lead's boss' boss will pull something off of the shelf that will line the pockets of the appropriate defence silicon manufacturer. After all, shareholders must be paid.

Getting a new processor qualified for space flight might not be a great idea, the amount of money saved would be eclipsed by the amount spent on cyclotron time to test the radiation hardening of the new chip.

There are probably other chips available for defence use, but they would be covered by ITAR and talking about them would make this forum covered by ITAR. The first rule of ITAR is that you don't talk about ITAR.

A

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on April 15, 2017 at 18:33

That, and most vendors at a commercial level have a preclusion for using the chips in weapons, nuclear and flight systems, or those where a failure (or correct operation) would result in the loss of life. Basically because you're going to have to indemnify them from any resultant litigation.

If you are building flight systems you really should be contacting the vendors directly, or via their representatives, using the normal channels and sales structures for doing that. ie Not social media or user forums.

[Andrei Chichak]

Posted on April 15, 2017 at 18:53

And don't underestimate the amount of memory and speed that you need. It would suck if your project was most of the way to Mars, you ping it to make sure that is ready to go, and it won't answer because you messed up on some code. Now you have to get onto the deep space network and remotely bootload the beast. You probably want a processor that is supported by VXWorks or RTEMS or one of the other RTOS' that have already flown, and has a bootloader and peripherals to talk to the downlink.

You really don't want to be on the front of Wired magazine as that person that blew a few million dollars by saving 200K on a processor.

A

[Leo Leo]

Posted on April 16, 2017 at 10:58

Hi,

Thank you very much for all your advices ! I will be care. Have a nice day !

🙂

 

[Patrice HAMARD]

Posted on April 21, 2017 at 17:04

Hi,

The mission profiles of our STM8 and STM32 families are not aligned with Aerospace requirements. As a matter of fact we are mainly offering products to consumer, industrial, and some STM8 for Automotive markets. But aerospace is a world , we have not considered to serve with our General purpose MCUs

First the the extended temperature -55 to 125dgC is over our specification in most of the case, second we have not done anything relative to radiation hardening whether in process nor in design, consequently I doubt the devices will be suitable for the aerospace environment, third we are following the Jedec standards regarding quality requirements instead of the MIL-PRF-38535. 

I suggest to not consider only the pure functional definition of the product, but the whole ecosystem  and choose a device and a supplier that is committed to serve the aerospace market. There are devices in ST that will probably suit your needs, and I recommend you to get in touch with our sales team in order to get information from the Aerospace and Defense product group.

Kind regards