[PIC] NXP or Freescale?

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Offir-D

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Sep 21, 2008, 2:47:11 AM9/21/08

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Hi,

I'm starting a design of a new circuit with a microcontroller. After
reviewing many options, two have reached the finish line - NXP's LPC2458 and
Freescale's MCF5225x. Both have the features I need (the LPC has a bigger
SRAM that can reduce my risks).
The problem is that I have a friend that had bad experience with NXP, their
development tools, support and bugs, and a good experience with Freescale.
If the MCs were identical I guess I would have no problem, however the MCF
has slightly less features and I don't want to base my decision solely on
one person's bad experience.
Did any of you have experience with NXP and Freescale that can help me
choose?

Thanks,
Offir
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John Day

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Sep 21, 2008, 10:33:37 AM9/21/08

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At 02:47 AM 9/21/2008, Offir-D wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm starting a design of a new circuit with a microcontroller. After
>reviewing many options, two have reached the finish line - NXP's LPC2458 and
>Freescale's MCF5225x. Both have the features I need (the LPC has a bigger
>SRAM that can reduce my risks).
>The problem is that I have a friend that had bad experience with NXP, their
>development tools, support and bugs, and a good experience with Freescale.
>If the MCs were identical I guess I would have no problem, however the MCF
>has slightly less features and I don't want to base my decision solely on
>one person's bad experience.
>Did any of you have experience with NXP and Freescale that can help me
>choose?
>
>Thanks,
>Offir
>--

These issues are always difficult. My experience is exactly the
opposite. I think a lot depends on your distributor, their FAE's and
what support you can get direct from the company. In particular my
software engineers (I am a hardware designer) have no time at all for
the CodeWarrior tools from Freescale. That and the issues of dealing
with support issues has driven us to be in the final phase of
considering an ARM9 (Atmel) replacement for a Freescale PowerPC.

I use the NXP ARM7's, PICs, Altera NIOS-II and Atmel AVRs. We use GNU
tools for NXP and Atmel, HiTech C for PICs and the Altera toolchain
(based on GNU) for the NIOS-II. Of these the HiTech/PIC combination
is in fact our least favourite and we anticipate no new designs using
them. We use ATmega family parts and are actively designing with the
new ATXmega parts. In particular where we need Ethernet we are using
NXP and have no issues of significance to deal with.