I am looking for information regarding how much longer the MC68332 will be available before end of life is declared.
Hi, I heard on the phone that this will depend on the sales. Maybe next year, maybe earlier or later. I am preparing for a redesign but have nothing compatible. Did you check the MCF5xxx Coldfire series?
Go to the MC683xx Product Page, and click on the "Parametrics" Tab:
This table USED to have "Last Order" and "Last Ship" columns available, but these were removed "to improve the selection experience", according to the "How to use" button.
The ones with something in the "Order" column are still available. If you click on one of them and select "Part Details" it will have "Device Sample" and "Device Availability" dates, which for the MC683xx chips are usually in 2004. If you click on some of the ones that aren't available, they'll have "Last Order" and "Last Ship" dates, which for the ones that were migrated due to ROHS happened in 2006. You might want to check these pages periodically in case they're updated with new "Last Order" dates. You can always make a "last time buy" for all the devices you want to produce for the next year or more at that time.
If you have an existing hardware design that has "dependencies" on the 68K architecture (like the TPU), and/or have software that is specifically written for the architecture or peripherals, then you might want to migrate to the Coldfire, but a lot of them have been around for a long time too. For instance, nothing reasonable new seems to have a TPU and an external bus (like the MCF5235). There have been recent posts on this in this forum.
Tom