3 cent microcontroller

Dealer site:

I found a critical Chinese part at LCSC, that's not available from the usual suppliers, for 30 cents each, and LCSC shipped 100 pieces by some type of DHL service, for only $10, and they arrived in four days. Awesome!

I was looking for a uP small and dirt cheap enough to put in a micro-server project where the enclosure will not be much larger than the total size of a desktop PC Ethernet port's through-hole housing and these seem to fit the bill exactly!

I bet there's not much chance of it going EOL soon by the look of things either hundreds and hundreds of thousands available that is _remarkable_

Why does it have to be dirt cheap?

For things like $1.00 toys I guess

that was the joke, son. :|

What amazes me is that we are currently looking into ASIC design, and we cannot even get the package for 3 cents, including test vectors. So how do they do an entire micro for 3cents out of the shop?

Cheers

Klaus

"public-private partnership" 'cept the Chinese are actually good at it

Bankrupt sale. Presumably it was produced - in volume - for a project that failed, and is now being sold off at a price that maximises the short term return.

If they charged more, they woud move the stock as fast.

They lose a little on each one they sell and make it up in the volume. ;)

Rick C.

"If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow" except bargain-hunting embedded systems engineers I guess! Heh!

The manufacturers homepage is

No update since 2016. Most of the press releases on their homepage mention government incentives, so it seems doubtful that this ever has been a functioning business.

Looks like they are defunct.

Well, the SOT23-6 package they are using is very similar to what is used by discretes.

Even at mouser, you can get discrete semiconductors in a SOT23 package for less than 1ct. Negotiated pricing is probably far less. So, yes, you can get a package like this for less than 1ct.

Regarding their silicon:

process. Since they are 5V tolerant, I assume that a 5V only CMOS process with minimum metal is used (1PM3). In a minimal configuration this will amount to 15 mask layers, give or take a few.

Their core logic is a no brainer and will eat up basically no space,

The tricky part is the OTP. They probably need something like 1024x12 bit= 12kbit, assuming that their design is somewhat similar to a PIC12C509. Usually the design for this has to be bought from an IP provider that charges a hefty license fee.

Ememory seems to have a suitable product:

silicon real estate. Using a low cost foundry it could indeed be possible to source this die for 0.01-0.02 USD.

Testing: Lets assume 0.01 USD/pc testing cost.

As a bottom line; if you ignore margins and indirect costs (NRE, licensing fees, SGA, distributor fee) you may get close to 0.03USD.

The real question is about scaling of the business. These prices only hold true if you sell tens to hundreds of millions of these devices. (A single wafer lots yields >1 million MCUS).

So, not sure how this is supposed to work as a business model. I assume that the pricing at LSCS is simply a fire sale.

Note that Padauk is a taiwanese company. So they are not likely to receive government aid.

e cannot even get the package for 3 cents, including test vectors. So how d o they do an entire micro for 3cents out of the shop?

Correct

.15

I looked up the Xfab XC018 process, and 1kROM is only 0,03mm2, so that is n ot setting the size, it is the ESD cells and the pad grid distance. In this case, the device has only 8 pads, so that does not result in a pad-limited design

of

Typical cost for wafer, that I know off, is about 0,05 USD per mm2. So 0.02

My guess is that they cannot produce the part for less than 0.03 USD, so no thing left for testing, labour, profit, indirect cost (buildings etc)

Cheers

Klaus

If you are happy to go up to $0.30 rather than $0.03, then you can get ARM Cortex-M0 parts from NXP and other more mainstream suppliers.

If I was able to go up, I could choose the Silabs EFM8BB1 or ATTiny, they both come in at about 15 US cents, half that of the Cortex M0+ devices

There is a vast difference in the quality of the cpu core between these two chips and the M0, if that is important to you.

Since you also mentioned ASICs, Atmel (now owned by Microchip) will do you ASICs with AVR cores in them. But I imagine you know that already.

By quality, do you mean the Field Failure Rate of the die? I do not expect an ARM device with many more transistors to have less failure rate....

Cheers

Klaus