Rochester Electronics has been licensed by Freescale to provide a continuing manufacturing solution for the Freescale MC68040 32bit microprocessor product family. Freescale announced the discontinuation of the 68040 devices and will be shipping the last products they will produce until November 2015. The agreement between Freescale and Rochester provides customers of the popular legacy MPUs with access to a secure and reliable source of parts for continued product supply.
Rochester Electronics is fully stocked with original Freescale packaged parts and silicon die from which it will manufacture a variety of device options. The company’s experience as the world’s largest continuing manufacturer and long-term aftermarket support solution for end-of-life, obsolete and discontinued semiconductors places it in the ideal position to guarantee supply of these parts. Freescale has also provided access to full design and test IP, making it possible for Rochester to continue manufacturing products even if all existing wafer stocks are exhausted.
In addition to the 68040 family, Rochester legacy support includes 68020, 68030, 68060 and the 68882 floating point coprocessor. Freescale will also be supporting Rochester on the supply of the MC68360 QUICC communications processor, which went EOL at the end of April.
The MC680x0 family has been widely adopted in sectors including military, aerospace, transportation, medical, industrial and communications, all of which are characterized by long installed product lifetimes and the need for extended availability of component parts. Rigorous qualification and standards approval processes can make redesign of systems in these areas either difficult or prohibitively expensive.
Discussing the cooperation with Freescale, Chris Gerrish, President, Rochester Electronics said: “The MC680x0 family of products has been and will continue to be critical to many systems with long product life cycles. Rochester’s capability to continue production of a Freescale licensed and authorized solution will save customers immeasurable redesign costs, time and effort. Our in-house design, assembly and test operations allow for smooth continuous indefinite production and supply”.