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What is the most pervasive MCU architecture?

I strongly suspect it is the 8051 core. It has good maturity and is produced by many many companies.

Yet the 6502 onwards were more popular before the 8051 was (am I right?). What about the 68H11? is it popular at all? Ive seen many references to powerpc-based MCUs but never bothered to dive in. Are they used around much?

I was opening an MP3 player at home and gave myself an exercise to list probabilities of various chips I might run into. ARM7 was on top of my list (I think I'd use it in an MP3 player), but found a 16bit ST chip and an ST MP3 decoder.

And then I see names like the dragonball, rabbit, and other stuff I feel I really should know about and dont. Has civilization been built on the bones of the 8051 or am I self-centric?

As a side question shamelessly shoved in, do people really use the PIC, or does Microchip make its money from students?

Reply to
Ghazan Haider
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Yup, there are more 8051's out there than people on the planet.

Well, 8 bit western civilization has.

Oh yes - Microchip claim to have shipped 3 Billion Pics.

You forgot 4 bit MCUs - they still churn out ~1Billion pcs/yr.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

The 6500 series was certainly popular, yet the 8051 (and the 8048 before it) became popular because they integrated memory and I/O on the same chip. I don't remember any 65XX that were like that.

Rabbit is based on the old Zilog Z80. There are actually two Dragonballs these days, both aimed at the PDA market. The first was based on the 68000 and the current is based on ARM. Dragonball has built-in LCD controller, analog inputs for a touch screen, programmable chip selects, and UARTs.

I know of a company that is using PICs for several new products. I also know of one popular car alarm system that used the PIC.

Reply to
Gary Kato

There was a modem maker that did OTP 65xx devices, IIRC. SST also recently released data and sampled a FLASH 6502 variant (65P543R) that has since 'gone quiet'.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville
4-bit Asian uPs. Nothing else comes close.
Reply to
Guy Macon

pervasive is not the same as popular. They tend to be used in high volume things. Most PC keyboards use an 8051. so right there they match all the PC CPUs made. 8 bit CPUs are powerful and cheap enough to do things that where all hardware years ago. Like digital clocks and calculators. I heard that those blinking sneakers kids wear have a PIC in them.

Reply to
Neil Kurzman

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