Kinetis Reliability

[MDeDonato]

I am currently looking to use the Kinetis K10 in a new board design that we are working on.  My concern is, that with all of the features and the relatively newness of the kinetis chip, that there will be some bugs in both hardware and software that could potentially be showstoppers for our products.  Has anyone successful designed and programmed a board using a kinetis chip, and would you recommend this chip for a new project?  

[murdo]

We are expecting our first prototype PCB in a few days using a K40 part. I can't speak to reliability yet but I have had trouble getting support information for designing in this part. I really wanted a recommended land pattern but one wasn't available so I copied the artwork in the Tower design. Also, I waited for about a month to receive an IBIS model from Freescale for this part and by the time it came I had already shipped off artwork to be fabricated so a proper SI analysis will have to wait for the next board spin.

I have also had trouble finding a programming house that can handle this part and have not yet found a reasonable solution. Programmers are wanting ~$7k to get tooled for programming these parts in production volumes.

Those issues aside the part is packed with all of the right features for my project and I haven't found anything better.

[amill]

Could you please send the IBIS model for the K40 to me.  I've been trying to get an IBIS model for a K20 for about a month with no luck; They say it's too new.  However, the most important pins for me are the USB pins and maybe I could use the data from the K40.

Thanks.

[iafg]

I've been involved with several K60 based products.. No critical issues.. some learning curve on details..

I'm aware of several high volume products that are in production now in the 100K~500K EAU range.

[MDeDonato · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response!  We have decided to switch chips from the K10 to ST's STM32F series.  These have a lot more support, and have very similar features to the kinetis.  The only major difference is that they are built on the M3 architecture instead of the M4.  

[LANCO_M4]

Good idea switching to ST. We have used both in designs and I can tell you the STM32 is currently a much, more mature platform. The Kinetis K70 and the dev tools for it have been nothing but problems for us. 

[bdmcnxn]

does a seller ever say that their goods are bad ?? :smileyhappy:

Kinetis line-up is one of the most impressive ones I've seen so far. Have already seen some indications that the 180MHz lineup was cancelled, restricting it to 150MHz, which is a shame really, but inspite of that the K60 for example, packs as much potential (or promise, once the planned features are available), as some of the much more expensive ARM9's. With FP, SIMD, cryptograpy support, I can really imagine some very serious applications. Infact, M4 is almost an Application Processor, minus the MMU, I guess. With a complementory, mature RTOS to go along, minimal integration worries, it's a very attractive package.

However I can understand your worry, and we have similar reservations. K60 (or even K50) would be very desirable for some application I am planning, but really afraid to go there yet.