HP50G not so good news?

[matthiaspaul]

This is really sad news.

One of the possible reasons to discontinue the HP 50g might be down to the fact that the Samsung S3C2410 processor (with ARM920T core of the ARMv4T architecture) appears to be discontinued. This definitely accounts for all versions of the S3C2410X, which was discontinued years ago, but AFAIK the 50g is based on the S3C2410A (does someone know for sure?), for which I have not seen any official announcements of a status change yet. However, Samsung lists the whole S3C2410 family as EOL on their web site:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/s...5&iaId=836

BTW, the 2008+ HP 12C model (F2230A?) as well as the 20b (F2219AA) and 30b (NW238AA) seem to be discontinued or about to be discontinued as well. The 12C utilizes an Atmel AT91SAM7L128-AU processor (with ARM7TDMI core - also of the ARMv4T architecture) in LQFP-128 package, whereas the other two calculators incorporate AT91SAM7L128 dies under the glob. These processors were manufactured in the French wafer fab LFoundry Rousset SAS, which was owned by Atmel before 2011, filed for insolvency in 2013 (after Atmel significantly cut down their order volume), and was declared bankrupt on 2013-12-26.

According to Atmel's part change notifications RE133101, SE133406, SE133406A, and RE150402, the AT91SAM7L128 processor was consequently announced to have reached end-of-life status by 2013-08-13 (some sources say 2013-12), with last shipments ending 2014-09-30 (some sources say 2014-12). Reasons cited were low demand and unability to transfer the special manufacturing process to another fab. Unfortunately, there is no direct replacement in the ARM7TDMI family, so even if Hewlett-Packard or its Chinese manufacturer would have stocked up chips, supply must be limited.

Greetings,

Matthias