Freescale has licensed Rochester Electronics to provide a continuing manufacturing solution for its MC68040 32bit microprocessor product family. The agreement between Freescale and Rochester provides customers of the legacy MPUs with access to a secure and reliable source of parts for continued product supply after Freescale announced the discontinuation of the devices.
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.
Chris Gerrish, president of Rochester Electronics said: "The MC680x0 family of products has been and will continue to be critical to many systems. Rochester's capability to continue production will save customers immeasurable redesign costs, time and effort."
First released in 1990, the MC680x0 family was used in Apple Macintosh, Amiga and Alpha Microsystems computers. They are said to have been widely used in sectors including military, aerospace, transportation, medical, industrial and communications, all of which are characterised 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.
Author
Tom Austin-Morgan
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk