Hi -
I'm embarking on a new project with a requirement for functional safety and overall reliability. The project is large in scope and will require a lot of development effort on my part, and I know from past experience that the selection of an MCU is rather like a marriage in that once a commitment is made, one has to live with both the good and bad, with the bad often not being obvious or even knowable at the project outset. Accordingly I have cast a wide net looking for MCUs suited to this purpose, and have considered Infineon Aurix, NXP S32, Renesas RH850, and TI's own Hercules series of parts. After a considerable amount of research, I feel myself gravitating towards Hercules and have some design momentum in that direction already, but I feel like I need to ask this question before taking the plunge.
The entire Hercules line strikes me as mature, which is a double-edged sword. On the positive side, it's comforting to use a product that is tried and true and has had some time to work out major kinks through silicon die revs and toolchain updates. On the negative side, a line that is too mature can get long in the tooth and may be in danger of being retired, but sales and marketing departments are usually very opaque about this kind of thing until it suddenly happens. As an engineer you have to learn to read between the lines a bit, and with Hercules there are several little signs that give me pause. One is that as I've combed through the various parts to try to select the best combination of attributes for my application (one of which is availability), I have run into many parts that are marked as obsolete in the distribution channels I've looked at. A second is that I've found several parts which, despite being marked as active, can't be found in distribution anywhere, even in TI's own store. Still another is that many of the datasheets, app notes, forum posts, and software packages I've found are several years old, in some case five or more. Finally, some of the industry reps I known for many years claim that TI has no long-term interest in MCUs in general and is trying to shed the business. I don't know how much of this advice is speculative, self-serving fear mongering on their part in an effort to steer me towards their competitive lines, but a few of them used to rep TI before the whole sales and support model was changed several years back.
I have read a response from a TI engineer to a similar question about Hercules, and I'll quote him here: "There are no current plans to obsolete these parts. TI makes an effort to not obsolete products out of convenience. Convenience means: low running device, poor yields, limited customer adoption or similar items. TI’s obsolescence withdrawal schedule provides a longer lead time than the industry standard."
This is somewhat comforting to me assuming it still holds true today (it was from November 2018). The reason I chose to post my concerns in spite of this response is this: availability of parts is one thing, but another equally important consideration is the long-term support of a part. Given that my only support option for these parts is through these forums - I can't pick up a phone to talk to someone or have a TI engineer visit me on-site - I would consider the availability of TI engineers who are expert in these parts to be a critical consideration.
Hercules seems very capable, well-suited for its intended purpose, and worthy of our commitment overall - can any offer anyone assurances that I'm not making a mistake in selecting this over several other fresh-faced competitive parts that seem to have a lot of recent marketing investment? I fully realize someone from TI may not be allowed to say "we plan to support Hercules for X years from today" or simply may not know what plans exist for it. I'm just looking for anything that will perhaps assuage some of my concerns.
Thanks, and sorry for the loquacity.
Josh
