Posted on January 17, 2016 at 16:29Honestly I'm a little skeptical, the promise is overly broad. When Micron did this, they had a narrow subset of parts, and only promised that they would support the foot prints with form and function, and this might be achieved with die shrinks and process changes. Business conditions are going to move the goal posts. I would expect the prices to increase as volumes drop, and the support/design staff move to other projects and companies. I think ''support'' and the ability to die/wafer bank are different things. ST outsources some of the package formats, so there are almost certainly some external dependencies beyond their control.
10 Years is a long time, a lot of things can happen, companies merge or go bankrupt, factories can be overwhelmed with tsunamis. The cycles for consumer electronics parts are 18 months to 2 years, and are the things which are going to drive profitability. We are already seeing a move to just building to order, rather than speculative production. Now there are industrial customers who have these 10-15 year time lines, and commitments their customers are pushing, but these are going to be high margin applications, that can defy economic drivers effecting everyone else.
You should talk with your ST sales reps to fully understand what the commitment is, and what it's real scope is.
