STMicroelectronics Pledges 20-Year Availability for Its SPC58 Automotive Microcontroller Family

STMicroelectronics has announced that it is putting its SPC58 microcontroller family, designed primarily with automotive applications in mind, into its top-end longevity program — promising 20 years of availability, through to at least 2038 and all the way to 2041 for at least one product line.

"Our long-term commitment to supporting the SPC58 family for automotive customers globally lets system designers confidently start new projects and continue to leverage their investments in device validations, software, and tooling," says STMicro's Luca Rodeschini. "The MCUs enable a flexible, platform-based approach and future-proof scalability, presenting a broad selection of device variants that support evolving automotive electrical architectures."

Longevity programs are all about ensuring that a design built around this year's chips doesn't need respinning for next year's chips — guaranteeing support and availability over a set period to provide confidence for designers that they will be able to keep their creations around for longer. In extreme cases, it leads to things like the Zilog Z80 — a part launched in 1976 and which was only officially discontinued in standalone form in April last year.

STMicro's promise doesn't quite reach that far, but it's pretty big: the SCP58 family of parts will be available, the company says, for at least 20 years from launch. FOr most parts, that means availability through to at least 2038; for others, including the SCP58 H-series general-purpose microcontroller with its generous 10MB of integrated non-volatile memory, 2041.

More information on the SPC58 family is available on the STMicro website; a full list of parts covered under the company's 20-year longevity commitment — as well as its lesser seven-, 10-, and 15-year longevity commitments — is available on a separate page.