topic Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ? in Kinetis Microcontrollers

Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 17:34:17 GMT

Hello.

What is happening with the Kinetis MK66 and MK64 microcontrollers, Why is there no stock in any supplier??

Until recently they could at least be obtained in Mouser, and sometimes in Farnell. But right now they are out of stock in ALL providers, they do not even have them in Mouser.

Does this mean that the Kinetis are going to stop being manufactured? For me it is important because I have many designs with Kinetis MK64 and MK66, and I also have new developments designed with these microcontrollers. But if NXP is going to stop making the Kinetis, I need to know to start migrating my designs to other ARM micros (probably Atmel SAM) and not start new designs with Kinetis.

I find it very strange how difficult it is to obtain these microcontrollers, and that they are not even available in Mouser.

I would appreciate an official response from an official representative of NXP, I believe that engineers and developers deserve a clear answer in this regard.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

mjbcswitzerland — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 18:07:33 GMT

Arrow has 2'000 K64F1M on stock for immediate delivery.
Digikey has 1'400 K66FX1M on stock.

I don't think that it is necessarily an NXP thing. Generally, lead times have increased greatly in the last 6 months - 8 weeks have skyrocketed to 40 weeks (Mouser is estimating 39 weeks at the moment for new deliveries but they probably have batches already in the pipeline). My manufacturer warned me of this trend in July 2017 and I ordered 2018 projections then to avoid such potential issues.

However this is not a new situation but a cyclic one that engineering needs to consider in any design plans (it was worse in 1994, 1999 etc.)

Regards

Mark

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 19:37:36 GMT

Thanks Mark.

Do you know from which country they send Arrow and Digikey ?, I need a supplier in Europe, to avoid having to pay customs fees.

Habitually I order some components to Mouser, free shipping costs for orders from 50 euros, and without customs fees, they send by Fedex and they are very fast. Here there are no more suppliers for Kinetis, Farnell advertise some but always out of stock. Really it is very hard order Kinetis microcontrollers, I do not understand why.

Finally time ago I locate a supplier in China, with good price for Kinetis, 9 USD for MK66 2Megas LQFP144, same chip in Mouser price 14 Euros + 21% IVA (17 Euros, so 20 USD). At any rate when I need a few units for some prototype I prefer order to Mouser.

I work also with STM32 from ST, and no problem, always available, and even from China at half of price that order to european suppliers. Atmel SAM S70 I can order directly to Microchip Direct, always in stock, fast, unique price, cheaper than Kinetis and it's a Cortex M7 300Mhz (as soon as I know how configure DMA, its my target microcontroller).

Regards

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

mjbcswitzerland — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 20:16:31 GMT

Luis

Digikey also has free delivery (more or less next-day to Europe) but custom fees depend on your country and such. Mouser is good because they have a distribution center in Germany and they take over the import work and this allows saving maybe $20.- or so of additional fees. However I don't expect that the difference is of major concern for a business needing to supply customers.

Mouser looks to have over 1'000 K66 on stock at the moment too - just do a search at findchips.com to get an overview of who has what, and at what price, on stock. Eg.
https://www.findchips.com/search/MK66

Regards

Mark

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 05:13:18 GMT

Arrow ships from the USA, and I will always have to pay Customs taxes, very expensive. Digikey, I do not know, but I suspect it's exactly the same, so it's not useful either, very expensive.

Mouser is fine, there are no customs taxes, they send by Fedex very fast, free transport for orders from 50 euros. But currently do not have stock of MK66 and MK64, it seems that MK66 will be available next December 28, but for MK64 must to wait until March 2018.

Incredibly, my only option is to ask China, also with a much cheaper price than any official European provider. The last order I made of MK66 2Megas, the price was only 9 USD, in Mouser 14 Euros + 21% VAT (17 €, then 20 USD), more than double that in China.

This is terrible, if you compare it with other manufacturers of microcontrollers, STM32 of ST, or SAM S70 of Atmel, good prices and always available in many suppliers. Why ?.

That's why I asked if NXP plans to stop making Kinetis forever. It is the only explanation I find to make it so difficult to find and buy these microcontrollers, or is that the marketing policy of NXP is a disaster, or is that they are only interested in the sale in very large quantities for the automotive sector.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

mjbcswitzerland — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 09:26:20 GMT

Luis

Don't forget that you can also buy parts direct from NXP on the the web site. K66 are marked as in stock and you can also order small quantities (from 1 K66 for $15, or 100 for $12.8 - K64 is also marked as in stock at $11.32 for a single piece or $9.58 for 100).

I don't know many details about pricing but NXP may be more expensive due to the free software that they give with the products. Based on discussions with people involved with PE, KDS, Tower kit developments, and such, it seems to be financially very draining and so presumably requires higher silicon prices to compensate. Possibly this is also the reason why PE, KDS, MQX etc. are being/have been discontinued but may also be due to changing strategies through Freescale, NXP, Qualcomm transitions.

Personally I still find that the Kinetis product line is very interesting and diverse and I intend to stick to them. This is even after receiving a letter from NXP to say that after 12 years as development partner and acquiring dozens of companies as new Coldfire/Kinetis users, supporting several hundred Coldfire/Kinetis product developments and investing thousands of hours supporting in forums that they had decided to terminate membership without giving any reason. I enjoy the engineering and am less fussed about the politics and ever-changing business strategies involved.

Regards

Mark

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 15:19:27 GMT

On making the order directly to NXP, if they make the shipment from USA, the problem remains the same, customs taxes are very expensive, so it is not interesting.

I sent an email to ask about this to NXP. I have made some free sample orders, in which I only paid 18 USD of freight and there are no customs taxes, I hope that in the direct order it will also be the same and there is no need to pay customs duties, but right now I do not know.

I have also tried to make a direct order on the website, but I get this error "More than one Published Part ID is found. Please contact direct@freescale.com with the Part Id.". I have not typed the chip reference by hand, but I have chosen it from the web, so I do not know what the problem is.

About prices I do not understand what you mean when you say they provide software with products. If you are referring to the IDE and the compiler, they are also free for STM32 from ST, or Atmel SAM S70, and I also think that they are generally free for any ARM microcontroller, because they are all based on the GCC compiler and most or all use as IDE Eclipse + Plugin. Therefore, the expensive price can not be justified due to the development tools they provide.

I also like MCU Kinetis, they are good products, but it is important to improve and clarify some matters.

1.- Define clearly, if NXP will continue manufacturing Kinetis after the purchase and disappearance of Freescale. That it is so difficult, more and more, to get the Kinetis, it makes me think.

2.- Offer a better distribution of its microcontrollers, in Europe. At this moment it is very complicated to get the product in distributors here, practically only offers Mouser, and even now they do not have stock.

3.- I do not know what are the conditions of direct purchase of microcontrollers for NXP, I hope it is something similar to Microchip Direct, which allows fast orders and without customs taxes.

4.- Until recently, after the disappearance of Freescale, we were not clear about the evolution of the IDE. KDS disappeared with Processor Expert and MCUExpresso was still far from being a serious product to work with Kinetis. Fortunately, it is changing, and the latest version of MCUExpresso already offers almost the same as ST with Cubemx and Eclipse. MCUExpresso at this time is fine to work with Kinetis.

5. Kinetis microcontrollers are a very good product, but expensive compared to other ARM from other manufacturers, such as STM32 from ST or Atmel SAM S70. NXP should lower prices, so that the product is more affordable and competitive, unless its true market is another, I suspect that the sale in large quantities to the automotive sector.

Regards.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

emmanuelsambuis — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 16:31:34 GMT

Luis,

I do not have the real-time visibility of the sellable inventory at Mouser, but would like to give you some perspective of the Microcontroller market.

The Kinetis business has grown tremendously in 2017. We are going to finish the year with a volume shipment increase of almost 2x vs. 2016. As you can imagine this is putting a significant stress on our our manufacturing flow, and this is why we have increased our leadtime during this past year.

We are currently working extremely hard on making sure our customers receive all the units that they order. We have established a very clear escalation path for all our channel partners to make sure they could report any urgent delivery to our business planning team. At the same time we are working on the manufacturing side, and have met our foundry partner multiple times in the past 6 months to make sure we plan for another major increase of our manufacturing capabilities. This increase will materialize in 2018 to deliver its full potential in early 2019.

It is difficult for me to help you more without a better understanding of your exact orders/demand.

Could you please contact your NXP reseller to make sure they escalate your request? This will make sure we work on it with the highest priority.

If you look at the total Semiconductor market (and especially for Microcontrollers), you will see that most suppliers are currently impacted by extended leadtimes. We do not have the final WSTS numbers for 2017, but the market is clearly seeing a significant demand increase this year and the YoY growth will be very visible.

On the NXP side our Application Processor (i.MX) and Microcontroller (LPC and Kinetis) businesses are growing in a major way and we are fully committed to supporting both of them.

I can therefore ensure you that there is no intention to discontinue any part of our roadmap. You are going to see new announcements and product launches very soon...

We are looking forward to working with you on some of these new products!

I wish you and your family a very Happy New Year!

Emmanuel

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

bobpaddock — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 19:11:49 GMT

It is just history repeating itself.
The dreaded word 'Allocation' will appear soon.

Motorola/Freescale/NXP/Qualcom/whatever the name of the day may be/ tends to sell the product to Automotive and other Tier One customers. They get them first and we get what is left, if anything.

In Early Days Motorola made a nice part for the time the 6805.
I designed them into a few products.

Went to order more and got obscene lead times in years.

I was told that Automotive bought them all for their engine controllers, to bad for you.

This is about the time General Instruments sold the PIC line to a new company called Microchip.

Microchip converted the abysmal PIC architecture meant only for running a Washer/Dryer 'White Goods' (See the GI data sheet) to CMOS. Microchip being new had no established market so it was easy to get PIC to replace the 6805. So nearly everyone screwed by Motorola switched to the PICs that they could get, even tho in comparison they sucked. Comes down to the 6805 screw job by Motorola created Microchip's market and the rest is history...

Those that do not learn from history are relegated to repeat it.
Those that do learn from history must standby and watch helplessly as others repeat it.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

bobpaddock — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 19:14:11 GMT

"I can therefore ensure you that there is no intention to discontinue any part of our roadmap. You are going to see new announcements and product launches very soon..."

Which maters not if you can't get them...

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

emmanuelsambuis — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:23:35 GMT

Bob,

I cannot comment on what happened with the 6805 years ago.

The good news is that we have learned from our past mistakes and over 50% of our devices are shipped towards small-mid size customers. It is never enough when manufacturing is constrained as it is today, but we keep monotoring the situation on a daily basis and will keep serving our small-mid size customers.

The new product launches are also treated so that we have enough material for all our customers during their initial development cycle as well as production ramp.

Lastly you are going to see a significant increase of shipments in 1H18, based on the latest manufacturing projection that we have received in December.

Regards, Emmanuel

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 21:55:21 GMT

I hope that NXP's policy, on European distributors, will change for the better and offer products in stock on a regular basis, and from several distributors, Mouser, Farnell, Amidata, TME, would be fine.

I do not know yet as if a direct purchase can be made to NXP, for shipment to Europe without going through Customs. So far I only asked for samples, and the purchases were made in Mouser. If the direct sales service of NXP is similar to that of Microchip Direct, it would be very interesting to be able to make purchases of any amount, at good prices, with fast shipping by agency, without paying Customs fees.

As for new product, it is missing new Kinetis with features similar to MK64, MK66, but that are Cortex M7 at 300Mhz or 400 Mhz clock. This type of product is already available to other manufacturers such as ST with its STM32H7 and Atmel with the SAM S70.

For when a Kinetis Cortex M7?, Not the models for motor control, but for general applications with SDIO, DMA, with peripherals similar to those of the current MK66, since these are already falling short in power compared with products of the competition. A powerful Cortex M7 is already needed for general applications.

Regards

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

andreacanepa — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 11:18:15 GMT

Hi Luis,

Even in the field of motor control, these problems of long delivery times arise.

Yes, the ARM M7 processor is used in the MKV58 kinetis (specific for motor control), but even here the story does not change: from Mouser if the product is not available, the waiting time is 39 weeks (about 10 months) this is absurd!

Another example always in the motor control field of NXP (formerly Freescale), the MCU MC56F84789, the latest product of the DSC family (I think a great product at a great price): from Mouser if the product is not available, the waiting time is 39 weeks!

For example, a European manufacturer, Infineon with the XMC4700 processor (Arm M4), the times are these: if the product is not available from stock, the delivery time is 8 weeks, a whole other thing.

It should be noted that these delivery times are not only related to Mouser, but have also been confirmed by NXP official dealers (Arrow).

So the fashion of increasing delivery times is not generalized on all manufacturers.

Andrea.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

emmanuelsambuis — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 22:29:20 GMT

Luis,

As I am not sure where you are located, it is difficult for me to comment on the export control agreements from our distributors/channel partners.

In the mean time I want to confirm our 39week lead-time for most Kinetis devices and a few DSC devices like the one Andrea mentioned above. We are currently shipping as many devices as we possibly to. I wish we have even more, as the demand is extremely strong for the entire portfolio. It is coming from a very broad range of customers.

In fact we typically do NOT sell standard Kinetis devices to Automotive customers, as the vast majority of these devices are not Automotive qualified (AEC-Q100). They are a few exceptions though, but really only a few. The MCU portfolio that we recommend for Automotive is the S32K. All these devices are Automotive qualified. You can have a look at the NXP web site for details on each platform.

Regarding the M7, I strongly recommend you have a look at the i.MXRT... It is our general purpose M7 platform. I am certain that you will find this device series extremely compelling. See at www.nxp.com/imxrt for details.

We are working on new i.MXRT devices that are going to hit the market in 2018...

I will get back to you as soon as possible when we start to reduce the Kinetis leadtime.

Thanks and Regards, Emmanuel

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 15:44:00 GMT

Hello Emmanuel

I am in Spain, and I usually order my electronic components to TME in Poland (although this supplier does not offer Kinetis), Mouser, Farnell and RS Amidata. I mainly order to TME and some special components to Mouser. I also have some good suppliers in China, for example now I can only order Kinetis to China and always with much cheaper prices than in European suppliers (MK66 9USD in China, 20 USD in Mouser), I do not understand this big price difference.

About Cortex M7, I mean microcontrollers, not microprocessors. If I choose a microprocessor, this dramatically increases the complexity and cost of development. If I need more power than that offered by an ARM Cortex M4 or M7 microcontroller, then I choose a SOC or an FPGA.

For me is also very important, the availability of a large community in forums and social networks, source code examples and open source libraries to program and use the most common peripherals, and good tutorials with practical examples, something that manufacturers do not usually offer.

For example, I see that it is very difficult to find good information about configuration and programming of DMA, with practical examples. Only for STM32 I found good information, Carmine Noviello's book is very good. But for the rest of ARM that I use, Kinetis and SAM, the information on DMA is very poor, there is not a good tutorial about it, I have to look for and look for example sources to study them and to learn how to use them.

Regards

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

emmanuelsambuis — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 20:18:24 GMT

Luis,

As you are located in Spain, could you contact Mark Patrick from Mouser? He should be able to answer all questions related to their pricing and export control. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Regarding the Cortex M7, the i.MXRT is a microcontroller. It does not include the on-chip flash, but you can now find off-chip flash at very low prices. The combination of the i.MXRT + the off-chip flash should give you a very attractive bundle price.

If you want me to look for examples on this device, please let me know. I will ask some people of our tech support to step-in. We have a long list of examples part of our SDK. All these examples go through rigorous testing before to be shipped ot our customers.

Thanks, Emmanuel

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 01:12:48 GMT

Thanks Emmanuel.
I will try to contact Mark Patrick.

Interesting if the MXRT is a microcontroller, I will verify it. But the external flash seems strange to me and can complicate the design, because I suppose it will be a parallel memory that will require many lines for the data and control buses. I also see a security problem, if the program is stored in an external memory.

If you can provide me more information and examples of sources for MXRT, I would appreciate it. I would also be interested in a schematic with the MXRT and an external flash, to be able to design and assemble a prototype to start testing it. I have not looked at the details of the development environment, IDE and compiler, I hope they are free, like MCUExpresso and GCC. About source library I need always SDIO for SD card access, USB, SPI, DMA, Serial and GPIO.

I also need more information and sources about DMA with Kinetis; Can you help me with that? I need some examples of sources to read in parallel several GPIO ports by DMA with an MK66.

Greetings.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

luishs — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 17:44:07 GMT

I have check in Mouser, and product i.MX RT1020, do not exist. Its really very very hard may check some NXP products if never available, only advertise in NXP web site, but impossible order it.

I do not understand the NXP policy. Or they are products that do not really exist, or they only sell them to aliens from Mars.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

zacharydickerso — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 19:18:55 GMT

Is there someone at NXP we can talk to on the phone about this?

I am the chief engineer, and we are about to yank all kinetis from all products and re-design from scratch. It is expensive, but we will lose even more money if we have to wait until October 2018, or not even resolved lead times by year end. Anything over 8-12 weeks will never work for us.

Re: Why Kinetis are out of stock in all suppliers ?

andreacanepa — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:07:09 GMT

I understand your frustration and agree with you.

Even my company is having to make your own choice and I am very sorry.

Honestly, I hope that this company policy will soon be revised by NXP and that it will reduce the delivery times of Kinetis, otherwise customers will have to find alternative products.