STM32L1 NRND'd

[waclawek.jan]

One of my friends noticed, that ST NRND'd not only the STM8, but also the whole STM32L1xx family.

However, in contrast to STM8, the 'L1 are under the 10-year commitment program, so they should continue to be available in the next 9 years.

 

JW

[Simon.T]

Hello Jan,

The STM8 MCUs had also the 10-years commitment program.

BR,

Simon

[Tesla DeLorean]

The commitment seems predominantly to supply, rather than support.

The development and engineering support seems to have already been defunded or redeployed.

[Danish1]

It probably also means that (as far as ST are concerned) you can do better with an alternative part also from ST.

Better? It might mean lower current, cheaper, peripherals with fewer bugs.

But unless/until availability improves it’s all a bit academic.

[waclawek.jan]

> The commitment seems predominantly to supply, rather than support.

I missed this nuance, as from my garage-scale perspective I never expected support beyond the public, which won't go away.

Btw. I wonder, why is it a mere user who announces this sort of things in ST's forum?

JW

[waclawek.jan]

HI Simon,

I checked and there's no STM8 in https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/quality-and-reliability/product-longevity.html#10-year-longevity .

Jan

@Simon.T​ 

[Tesla DeLorean]

I think @Peter BENSCH​ has touched on these things in the past

https://community.st.com/s/question/0D53W000024XdNjSAK/96bit-unique-id-of-stm8af52xx

TBH, I've previously posted in the STM8 space about my perception that there is very little investment / commitment to the parts, tools, compilers, assemblers, etc.

The STM8 and STM32L1 might come out of fabs with different goals and commitment levels.

That industries wanting 10 year commitments need to own a least some of the responsibility of ensuring that, as distributors and manufacturers are walking away from models where they hold deep stock levels, and fabs might be subject to market forces, equipment failure, pandemics, or natural disasters which might ultimately limit their interest or commitment levels to building old parts indefinitely.

Micron has perhaps a better model, where they don't promise every possible part/package, but rather a more narrow subset, and those where they'll perhaps replace with newer technologies/geometries with the same form and function.

ST might want to focus on stronger pin-for-pin compatibility for parts, or making CM0(+) parts with the exact same expectations and foot-prints of the STM8 parts they want to deprecate. Or other more nimble vendors might want to focus on stealing that market share.

[Pavel A.]

> making CM0(+) parts with the exact same expectations and foot-prints of the STM8 parts

IMHO one of expectation on STM8s is a very short, simple startup code (aka SystemInit). No confusing clocks config stuff. Built-in eeprom was pretty useful too for chip with small number of pins.

[Peter BENSCH]

First of all: availability is already improving, depending on the family, better stock levels will soon be seen.

Then on the subject of STM32L1: yes, the family has been put on NRND, but is still on the Product Longevity List. However, there is still plenty of time until 2032 to switch to another pin4pin compatible family.

And yes, there will be a pin4pin compatible family as a replacement at the right time, of course again with 10 years of commitment - stay tuned, you can be curious.

And finally, on the subject of STM8: yes, these devices are no longer on the product longevity list for the next 10 years - you can work out the rest.

However, the STM8 were still used for various reasons, of which the 5V compatibility should not have become quite so important by now, but their interesting price should have played a major role. And this is exactly where the recently launched new STM32C0 family comes in, aimed precisely at replacing many of the previous STM8 (not STM8A, this is a complete different story). Advantages of the STM32C0 should be quickly apparent: the same development environment as the (perhaps already used) STM32, similar pinout as STM8, considerably more computing power relative to the price, etc. Yes, there are exceptions, such as the STM8S208 with CAN, but this can easily be replaced with the STM32F042 (which is available again) or its bigger brothers.

I realise there will be a lot of discussion on the topic STM8, but really this thread is about STM32L1, right?

Regards

/Peter

[waclawek.jan]

> ... but their [STM8] interesting price should have played a major role. And this is exactly where the recently launched new STM32C0 family comes in

 

As Clive said above, the competition will quickly come and eat this piece of the pie.

JW

PS Okay, and so the STM8 were *never* part of the 10-year commitment, or you've just simply erased them from that list?