8051 dead or what?

Hi All. I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National Semiconductors CD40106. But thats not the subject of this post ;-)

.....................

I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed. Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand. Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051 series. Thank you. Alistair.

Reply to
Alistair George
Loading thread data ...

not as far as I know. But that is best gauged by sales of 8051 type products. The 2051 is nice as a small pinout selfcontained cpu with limited program space, but for larger applications one would need more space. Personally I used the DS2252T with 64k prog space and 64k Ram, lots of room and lots of money too. rw

Reply to
Ryan Weihl

There are still lots of new announcments for the 8051 architecture but if you want to play if as save as possible you might want to go for devices like the AT89C51RB2, RC2, RD2 which are also pin compatible availabile from Philips, called P89C51Rx2. afaik the Atmel devices support byte programmability because they are build on an EEPROM process while these Philips devices do not support this feature but if you do not use the unique features, you will not be tied to one source.

So, RB2/RC2/RD2 could be good options. The C55 is an Atmel only device and that is always a little more risky. Nevertheless, the 8051 is far from dead.

An Schwob

Alistair George wrote:

Reply to
An Schwob in the USA

We use the HEF40106BT, and that works very well, over a long time frame.

Most users here in NZ, have morphed their AT89C55WD designs to the AT89C51ED2. (or RD2 )

There is also the AT89S8253.

For new AT89C2051 designs, you should look at the AT89LP4052 ( also in stock in NZ )

If you need ADC, the SiLabs C8051F41x is a good choice for new designs : 50MIPS and 12 bit adc/dac, and 5V operation, with on chip debug.

We keep a variant supplier listing here :

formatting link

and you can see, the 8051 is a very long way from dead.

What has happened, is that the lead-free transition, has caused some stocking rationalise

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Jim Granville wrote: snip>

Hi Jim, Just checked on price of AT89C51ED2 and it seems quite a bit more than the AT89C51WD; but that was R/Spares price.

Re HEF40106BT been there, tried that does not work in our use, which as a very high gain oscillator.

Good to see you still keeping on. Cheers for info, Alistair.

Reply to
Alistair George

Alistair George wrote: I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the

I don't think so, the Silabs C8051FX series beats the so called modern ultra low power MSP430's/AVR's/PIC's, in speed, analog I/O performance, small size and power consumption, specifically

1) 12 bit A/D with programmable gain amplifier with actual signal to noise performance specification (try to even find this info with the MSP430's or Atmels, I suppose its so bad they don't want to post it, at least AVR has a noise reduction mode where they shut off the CPU for conversions, see this months Circuit Cellar for an example of the crazy A/D performance of the AVR's with the CPU running) 2)On some models, a true 16x16 bit MAC with 40 bit accumulator, the MSP430 is the only one that comes close, it has a sort of MAC, doesn't work with signed numbers (???) has a 32 bit accumulator, nice try I guess 3) A mult and divide instruction, even in the smallest 3mm x 3mm packages, none of the others have a divide (except the PIC24) and only the higher end MSP430's/AVR models have a multiply (why exactly do the modern guys believe you don't need a divide instruction? or why is a multiply an option only available on the big chips). 4) Power, how about 300 uA at 1Mhz, 9.5ma at 50 Mhz,
Reply to
steve

You are using a hex schmitt trigger as a high gain oscillator?

Ian

Reply to
Ian Bell

What about a soft core 8051 written in VHDL or Verilog? Reusable in an FPGA for a long time to come. :-)

"Alistair George" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@news.orcon.net.nz...

series.

Reply to
Bubb

In article , Bubb writes

Lets face it the 8051 will carry on for a long while yet. There are VERY many producers of 8051 parts and cores, never mind a second source you have multiple. The 8051 core is low cost if you want to put it in an FPGA to create your own.

There are many high quality tools and a lot of experience for the 8051 out there. The packages range from 8 pin SMT to 150+ pins though I think the 40 pin DILs are hard to find now... Even radiation hardened versions.

I am sure that the 600 odd variants will shrink down to only a few hundred over time but I can't see it dying out for a few years yet. I think it is the most popular MCU on the planet including x86. AFAIK most PC's have one or two 51's in them somewhere. Used to be keyboard and mouse.

--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Chris Hills

Chris Hills wrote: I

Yes, SST have an interesting new device, targets PCs, that has the

4MBit BOOT FLASH, and the FLASH C51 IO controller, all for $3.50@10K [also usefull for Loggers, or just lots of IO ]

formatting link

another notable announcement is ASIX's 10/100 Ethernet, with inbuilt PHY and TCP/IP, and a 100MHz C51 core, and up to 512KF/32KR. I have not seen price indicators on this one yet.

formatting link

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Yes, in the original National app notes shows a schmitt trigger as an oscillator. Variations between manufacturers have largely made that form of use redundant.

PS thanks to others for continuing this thread to the enlightenment of myself and others on the use of, and alternatives to the original 8051 series of uP. Al.

Reply to
Alistair George

This is curious - I take it you mean something other than the standard, widely used 2 terminal RC Schmitt oscillator ( or the 3 terminal oscillator, which is more acurate but needs 3 gates of a 40106 ) ?

Do you have a URL of such a configuration ?

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

No Jim, the former as you suggest but in our app it uses a 3m3 feedback r and a special capacitor. Spreads between i/c of the same maker were acceptable, but not between supposed replacement alternatives. In hindsight, I should have used a comparator for the job. Al.

Reply to
Alistair George

Jim as an aside, I know you have your own hardware emulators, but have you used the DS2250? I built a bunch of these emulators up 8 years ago, when they worked perfectly, now cant get them to work, despite various RS232 cables, baud rates, DOS (not XP) and so on - keep getting coms errors, but can use dallas KIT5k to upload kernal. Al.

Reply to
Alistair George

I think he means in a crystal oscillator - ISTR this was a common way of generating a microprocessor clock in the 80s but even then it was known to be unreliable due to using a digital device in an analog mode.

Ian

Reply to
Ian Bell

IIRC, the 8048/8749 etc. NMOS microcontrollers used a ST in a Pierce oscillator configuration. IIRC it was supposed to start up in RC mode @ 50kHz or so and then transition to oscillating at the crystal frequency. But there are potential problems (it might not make that transition depending on parameters) and that configuration isn't seen much these days.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Fixed it was a pot puri of various things from a defective coms cable (which I'd checked) Windows sometimes doing coms reliably, and other times not. Whew that was tricky! Al.

Reply to
Alistair George

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.