Arduino users?

I guess it must be *possible* for them to be partially set. If programming is interrupted or done incorrectly or at wrong voltage perhaps.

I was thinking more of something like the wrong clock oscillator option, or wrong brownout detection level.

I seem to recall reports of on-chip POR being flakey too, but it is years and years since I used them.

That we could safely exclude.

I do not trust the POR/BOR on them at all. But that goes for most uC, it seems uC designers have a hard time with threshold detectors or the respective companies don't have enough analog talent.

Anything that is the slightest bit analog they get wrong. (Generally, not Atmel specifically). BOD, POR, clock PLLs, voltage references, ADCs. Startup, Real time clocks, sleep current.

In my experience, TI does a better job than most when it comes to the analog stuff on uControllers, but it does seem that putting analog stuff on the same die as a CPU results in generally sucky analog stuff.

I guess the process is tuned for, say, flash memory and everything else just has to work with that.

The other leading edge analog vendor is ADI, and they are the only ones I would trust to put an ADC on a CPU chip. Trouble is their digital peripherals are clunky.

These look pretty powerful:

I have not tried any TI micros yet, they were late in the game with ARMs IIRR.

The digital stuff in an Arduino-level 8-bit microcontroller is quite wimpy compared to the faster ARM mpu's, application processors, etc. I wonder if they could use processes tuned to the analog stuff and just accept lower efficiency of the digital part. Even if the digital performance suffers by 2x or more vs. a digital-optimized process on the same amount of silicon, it could still be fine.

That is what ADI did with their "analog microcontrollers".

Mediocre cores with decent analog.

But their new CM4xx look like the successors to these, and are very powerful. Expensive, and I don't know what the digital periperals are like (IME they are usually a bit limited compared to other vendors).

seems the manufacturers do one of two things:

make analog designers do the analog peripherals, the analog works but the digital interface is a clunky hairball that barely works

make digital designers do the analog peripherals, the digital interface works but the analog performance leaves a lot to be desired

-Lasse

This could easily be solved if they accepted the use of consultants. Often not done in large companies and that's a big mistake.

Yes, that's definitely a big part of the problem. When you make a pcb, you have choices about the number of layers, the thickness of the layers, width of tracks, types of vias, power layers, coatings, etc. You pick different combinations for boards that are high-speed digital, accurate analogue, low-power, high current, etc. Chip design is somewhat similar, but there are more factors, they make a bigger difference, and they are harder to mix on the same die. So mixing digital parts, memory, power parts and analogue parts on the same die is always going to mean compromises.