Electronics > Microcontrollers

Is a revision A of Silicon reliable, if there is a B?

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luiHS:
Hi.

As most of us know, the global shortage of electronic components is already chaotic. I am doing what I can, to redesign my circuits with the 32-bit microcontrollers that I find, very few or none at all. Everything that is BGA 0.8mm pitch is out of stock, I had to settle for buying a remainder of stock in LQFP, and what is left and nobody wants is BGA 0.65mm pitch.

The fact is that there is a microcontroller reference with revision A of Silicon, of which there is a large quantity in stock. The strange thing is that they appear with the status "Discontinued", when it is a very recent microcontroller. Silicon revision B exists but sold out until the end of the year.

Is it reliable to buy a revision A of Silicon, when a revision B already exists, or could it have many errors and not be useful?.
It is suspicious that they have so much stock and the status is Discontinued. I have asked the supplier, but he has not answered me yet.

ataradov:
Why not look at the errata documents? The differences are usually clearly documented.

There is no particular reason to have two revisions on the market, so older revisions are marked as discontinued, although they will be produced for years to come, since many customers would have designed them in. And especially if there are significant enough differences to cause firmware incompatibility.

woofy:
It may be just a die shrink, but it's most likely bug fixes.
The only way to know for sure is to get the errata sheets for the A and B revisions and compare them.

PCB.Wiz:

--- Quote from: luiHS on June 11, 2021, 09:00:55 pm ---Is it reliable to buy a revision A of Silicon, when a revision B already exists, or could it have many errors and not be useful?.
It is suspicious that they have so much stock and the status is Discontinued. I have asked the supplier, but he has not answered me yet.

--- End quote ---
As above, professional vendors have errata sheets, which list the changes.
In most cases they are minor, and affect one peripheral, and many errata have SW workarounds.
Ideally, you code your SW so it can manage with either variant.
So, you need to find the errata docs and study what effect they may have.

Doctorandus_P:
Die shrinks can also lead to greater susceptibility to ESD and smaller tolerances for other kind of abuse.

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