Any of you had to make this decision? I have to make this decision. Hardware wise, Freescale seems to win (they have a 32 pin QFN package with 128K flash with an M4 core), but you have to think about software as well.
Just from what I have tried:
Freescale has great intentions with there SDK/IDE. It works out of the box (just getting an LED to blink). However, their implementation is rushed. For example, some of their freedom boards do not have their "code generation" working and you have to manually upgrade their IDE for support on certain MCUs. That said, I found that it was pretty easy to get the board working without the code generation as the IDE is pretty integrated (and it runs on Linux) and their library API is well documented. JTAG wise, you need to spend money, though. Also, their micro seems to give you much more flexibility in terms of what pins can get assigned to.
STmicro, it is sort of the opposite. That said, their code generation GUI works very well (in Windows). However, I am not 100% confident I could get things working without it because their libraries are pretty intense and not well documented. Also, aside from the code generation GUI, there is no IDE. Despite releasing their Linux IDE (just Eclipse), I was unable to get things up and running with their nucelo boards. Under Windows, running with the GUI and the free version of Attolic was very easy, but messy. JTAG wise, they sell their cheap JTAG that actually works very well for programming out of the box except for the fact that I cannot get printf to work over JTAG, even with their printf tool.
That being said, STMicro is still used much more. Am I missing something? Why is STmicro more appealing in the market? Neither of the companies are perfect, but it seems like I had to put much more effort into getting the STmicro up and running. Thoughts?
Just from what I have tried:
Freescale has great intentions with there SDK/IDE. It works out of the box (just getting an LED to blink). However, their implementation is rushed. For example, some of their freedom boards do not have their "code generation" working and you have to manually upgrade their IDE for support on certain MCUs. That said, I found that it was pretty easy to get the board working without the code generation as the IDE is pretty integrated (and it runs on Linux) and their library API is well documented. JTAG wise, you need to spend money, though. Also, their micro seems to give you much more flexibility in terms of what pins can get assigned to.
STmicro, it is sort of the opposite. That said, their code generation GUI works very well (in Windows). However, I am not 100% confident I could get things working without it because their libraries are pretty intense and not well documented. Also, aside from the code generation GUI, there is no IDE. Despite releasing their Linux IDE (just Eclipse), I was unable to get things up and running with their nucelo boards. Under Windows, running with the GUI and the free version of Attolic was very easy, but messy. JTAG wise, they sell their cheap JTAG that actually works very well for programming out of the box except for the fact that I cannot get printf to work over JTAG, even with their printf tool.
That being said, STMicro is still used much more. Am I missing something? Why is STmicro more appealing in the market? Neither of the companies are perfect, but it seems like I had to put much more effort into getting the STmicro up and running. Thoughts?