5 ms·

Yikes! That sounds frustrating. As the article concluded with, the way forward appears at the end; ST adding an errata for this. The elephant in the room: How

Yikes! That sounds frustrating. As the article concluded with, the way forward appears at the end; ST adding an errata for this. The elephant in the room: How is the author getting STM32 G4s? I've been F5ing this every day with no luck for months: https://octopart.com/search?q=stm32g4+ceu&currency=USD&specs=0 https://octopart.com/search?q=stm32g4+ceu&currency=USD&specs...

jpieper 4y ago
Order far in advance....? These particular chips arrived more than a year ago. But yes, the shortage is hitting hard here too. The last tray I received was one year ago, after which all orders have been unfulfilled.
realcertify 4y ago
There's plenty of STM32 of any flavor in China. Alibaba is a good source. There may be fakes though, but reputable resellers (pay attention to reviews and tenure) normally sell genuine chips.
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  Thanks for the tip! Will check that out. Worth taking the risk.
- pabs3 4y ago
  Are fakes of lesser quality? How do you tell fake from genuine?
  - kragen 4y ago
    I've gotten some Blue Pills with (properly labeled) CKS32s on them, which might be of lesser quality, but I've also seen people reporting getting Blue Pills with (properly labeled) GD32s, which are higher quality than the ST part, at least in the sense that they run successfully at higher clock speeds. (I couldn't tell you if they have more problems turning on many peripherals at close-together times, or if they have more noise on their ADCs, or something.)
  - civilitty 4y ago
    You have to research the counterfeit market for each chip/product series. There's no hard and fast rule for their quality because many of them come from the same factories that make the real chips when unscrupulous fabs have shadow shifts manufacturing their clients' designs for themselves or just straight up copy and rebrand it.
jhallenworld 4y ago
If you can use Cortex-M0+ (so not likely for this project, BLDC where you want floating point), maybe think about RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico chip)? More than 100K of them in stock at Digikey, only $1 each... But they come in only one package type, and use external flash (an advantage, IMHO). I've recently started looking at them. The SDK is nice except that they chose to use CMake. I designed it out: https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs-pico https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs-pico
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  > an advantage, IMHO it isn't An extra chip means higher cost to produce & assemble board, larger board size, more pins wasted on this nonsense, most fast-edge signals to route, more passives, extra risk to handle for one extra chip being out of stock, and it is much easier to extract firmware than even from a "protected" stm32 Also wasting RAM (and power for it) on code, or random (between high and very high) latency of XIP from SPI flash
  - jhallenworld 4y ago
    But balanced against basically unlimited flash size. Many of my projects end up having an external SPI-flash for one reason or another anyway. Another similar chip is the i.MX rt1020 from NXP (except Cortex-M7 and way more expensive). The one gotcha was that there was only one QSPI-flash controller even though there were two ports. It meant that the extra port (which we assumed would be available during architecture) was not fully usable without interfering with the firmware.
    - dmitrygr 4y ago
      > Many of my projects end up having an external SPI-flash for one reason or another anyway. for what? What sort of possible thing would you need to do on a c-m0 that needs more than 128K of CODE!?
      - jhallenworld 4y ago
seidleroni 4y ago
Getting samples of G4's was pretty easy. Since its a fairly new part, there was a large stock that distributors had for engineering samples. The story is very different for things like the F5/F7's and even getting small sample volumes is very hard.
dognotdog 4y ago
I just bought 10 off digikey last week, to have some prototyping stock. Looks like they still got some: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronics/STM32G491CEU6/13592603 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronic... Octopart, etc haven't been able to accurately track inventory through this disruption.
- girvo 4y ago
  We can buy them in 10s at work without too much gnashing of teeth, but the thousands we need is impossible for another 18 months as far as we can tell. Edited to add: not that it matters now, we moved to a different MCU that we could get larger shipments of, and we’re lucky enough our application of them can be flexible enough to do so!
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  Good to know! I've been trying to get hold of certain H7 and G4 variants in a specific footprint. Family and footprint are a hard requirement, but not too picky otherwise. Checking it out. Of note regarding the one you linked - great find; looks like that Octopart link was bad! I actually have some 491s, and they're great, except that the OSS firmware I'm using them with for this project doesn't support them. Got my own firmware working on them though.
  - jpieper 4y ago
    I'm curious what other OSS firmware is using the G4 series?
    - the__alchemist 4y ago
      Betaflight I also have custom flight controller firmware in Rust that's running fine on G491, but Betaflight needs 47x or 48x. No luck on getting H7s.

jpieper 4y ago

Order far in advance....? These particular chips arrived more than a year ago. But yes, the shortage is hitting hard here too. The last tray I received was one year ago, after which all orders have been unfulfilled.

realcertify 4y ago

There's plenty of STM32 of any flavor in China. Alibaba is a good source. There may be fakes though, but reputable resellers (pay attention to reviews and tenure) normally sell genuine chips.

the__alchemist 4y ago
Thanks for the tip! Will check that out. Worth taking the risk.
pabs3 4y ago
Are fakes of lesser quality? How do you tell fake from genuine?
- kragen 4y ago
  I've gotten some Blue Pills with (properly labeled) CKS32s on them, which might be of lesser quality, but I've also seen people reporting getting Blue Pills with (properly labeled) GD32s, which are higher quality than the ST part, at least in the sense that they run successfully at higher clock speeds. (I couldn't tell you if they have more problems turning on many peripherals at close-together times, or if they have more noise on their ADCs, or something.)
- civilitty 4y ago
  You have to research the counterfeit market for each chip/product series. There's no hard and fast rule for their quality because many of them come from the same factories that make the real chips when unscrupulous fabs have shadow shifts manufacturing their clients' designs for themselves or just straight up copy and rebrand it.

jhallenworld 4y ago

If you can use Cortex-M0+ (so not likely for this project, BLDC where you want floating point), maybe think about RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico chip)? More than 100K of them in stock at Digikey, only $1 each... But they come in only one package type, and use external flash (an advantage, IMHO). I've recently started looking at them. The SDK is nice except that they chose to use CMake. I designed it out: https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs-pico https://github.com/nklabs/libnklabs-pico

dmitrygr 4y ago
> an advantage, IMHO it isn't An extra chip means higher cost to produce & assemble board, larger board size, more pins wasted on this nonsense, most fast-edge signals to route, more passives, extra risk to handle for one extra chip being out of stock, and it is much easier to extract firmware than even from a "protected" stm32 Also wasting RAM (and power for it) on code, or random (between high and very high) latency of XIP from SPI flash
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  But balanced against basically unlimited flash size. Many of my projects end up having an external SPI-flash for one reason or another anyway. Another similar chip is the i.MX rt1020 from NXP (except Cortex-M7 and way more expensive). The one gotcha was that there was only one QSPI-flash controller even though there were two ports. It meant that the extra port (which we assumed would be available during architecture) was not fully usable without interfering with the firmware.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    > Many of my projects end up having an external SPI-flash for one reason or another anyway. for what? What sort of possible thing would you need to do on a c-m0 that needs more than 128K of CODE!?
    - jhallenworld 4y ago

seidleroni 4y ago

Getting samples of G4's was pretty easy. Since its a fairly new part, there was a large stock that distributors had for engineering samples. The story is very different for things like the F5/F7's and even getting small sample volumes is very hard.

dognotdog 4y ago

I just bought 10 off digikey last week, to have some prototyping stock. Looks like they still got some: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronics/STM32G491CEU6/13592603 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronic... Octopart, etc haven't been able to accurately track inventory through this disruption.

girvo 4y ago
We can buy them in 10s at work without too much gnashing of teeth, but the thousands we need is impossible for another 18 months as far as we can tell. Edited to add: not that it matters now, we moved to a different MCU that we could get larger shipments of, and we’re lucky enough our application of them can be flexible enough to do so!
the__alchemist 4y ago
Good to know! I've been trying to get hold of certain H7 and G4 variants in a specific footprint. Family and footprint are a hard requirement, but not too picky otherwise. Checking it out. Of note regarding the one you linked - great find; looks like that Octopart link was bad! I actually have some 491s, and they're great, except that the OSS firmware I'm using them with for this project doesn't support them. Got my own firmware working on them though.
- jpieper 4y ago
  I'm curious what other OSS firmware is using the G4 series?
  - the__alchemist 4y ago
    Betaflight I also have custom flight controller firmware in Rust that's running fine on G491, but Betaflight needs 47x or 48x. No luck on getting H7s.