LPC844/845 supply problem??! Good for New Design?

[jmullen_condose]

Hello all!

I have a new design we have been working with, to replace a 10 yr old product that currently uses MC9S08QE32 MCU - which are rather outdated and getting quite expensive to purchase 1600 at a time. We looked at the LPC844, specifically LPC844M201JBD48E and made prototypes, learned the new MCUexpresso (goodbye CodeWarrior!) and love it! 

Now I am looking at production for them and suddenly all 3 of our main suppliers show virtually no stock in either 844 or 845 versions....!! With 6 to 8 month lead times. 

Question:  Did we make an error in selecting the LPC -series MCU? Is there a popular, similar chip that is similarly low cost but not in such supply backlog? It would be 'easy' to swap out the LPC chip at this point in development, so I hope I am asking in the correct forum. Since I am looking for some product suggestion from the community, a support ticket didn't seem to be the way to go

While I'm at it - I'm also looking for a small (as in, minimal I/O lines maybe 10, and sleepable for battery operation, wake every 5 or 10 seconds to check for water, transmit if needed so maybe 1 USART for comms and that's it!), super low power MCU to use in a 433MHz water sensor device. Lots of arduino projects showing them, but I want to make our own production using NXP MCU. Any pointing in a direction for this is super appreciated! 

Cheers!

[ZhangJennie]

HI

Regarding NXP MCU portfolio, S08 (8-bit) and LPC800 (Cortex-M0+) for Entry-level applications.

LPC800 is the replacement of S08. So your choice is correct.

Regarding to the lead time, as I know that  NXP website announces the maximal value of the leadtime we can expect. for example, 26 weeks or 32weeks. 

Please check it with NXP distributors for the concrete leadtime.

Have a nice day,

Jun Zhang

[jmullen_condose]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, I had already checked with the Big Three distributors and only the 33 Pin version is available in any quantity. It seems as an 'entry level' part it is not popular in the 48 pin version LPC844M201JBD48E. We need the additional I/O pins of the 48 pin and have another design also we wish to convert similarly, using the 64 Pin version, which is also very rare with 26 week lead times. 

Perhaps there is a similar, more popular MCU with similar features to the 48 or 64 PIN version of the LPC844 I could look at? I see there is a VAST array of MCUs, so some suggestion for 'popular' (ie. typically stock available!) parts would be great!

[ZhangJennie]

I suggest you contact your supplier if they have stock for other LPC8xx parts.

As I know, this year, because of impact of covid -19, the lead time gets longer than before.