Zilog Introduces 8051 Microcontrollers

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Zilog shows us all that the 8051 will never, ever die. Ever.

Big Z has some nice parts - 100nA sleep current, EEPROM, and a single-cycle multiply.

Article shows a selection guide for the new parts.

Bill Giovino

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Reply to
Bill Giovino
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I wonder who'll buy that :-)

Reply to
scrts

Sheesh.

I admit that compared to the 8048, the 8051 was a breath of fresh air and a joy to use. But, that was THIRTY YEARS AGO. There have been dozens of far better, easier to use, MCU architectures since then. For eample, the MSP430 for low-end, ARM Cortex for the mid-range, and an number of ARM/PPC/68K derivitives at the high end.

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Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I just remembered
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

I have to admit I've got a bit of a special place in my heart for the 8051. It's so thoroughly the opposite of orthogonal that you really had to pay attention to get the best out of it. Special memory locations, limited memory capacity, limited clock cycles, special registers, special I/O, special instructions. Yeah! But that "best" could be very good indeed when you went to the trouble.

At the same time I was doing 8051 work on the older product line I was also working with the Cold Fire (very similar to the 68000). What an amazing contrast.

I can't think of an application I'd design an 8051 into, but fond memories of hard but interesting work.

- Bill

Reply to
Bill Leary

It is interesting, but more interesting is where the silicon actually comes from, and whose devices Zilog is re-badging here.

-jg

Reply to
j.m.granville

from, and

Mentor developed the low-power 8051 IP for Zilog. No re-badging.

Bill Giovino

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Reply to
Bill Giovino

Really? Who told you that ?

Have you looked at the device siblings, and how they are not quite common across all variants, but are clones (down to the quaint english) of someone else's parts ?

-jg

Reply to
j.m.granville

across all

Nobody writes 8051 documentation from scratch. Even STC's 8051 datasheets are copies of competitor datasheets, which themselves are copies of others. And Mentor sells their

8051 IP (and documentation) to many customers.
Reply to
Bill Giovino

across all

parts ?

copies of

their

You have not answered the question, merely deflected.

Q: Who claimed Zilog's Silicon is their own, and what were their exact words ?

I've given you a News Lead, dig a little - and this info is all in the public domain, you do not need a NDA. It helps tho, to understand the details.

-jg

Reply to
j.m.granville

Zilog told me their chip used Mentor IP. It seems that Zilog is not the only company using the same IP. Zilog may have made a deal to use documentation from a company using the same IP until they can put together their own.

Reply to
Bill Giovino

company

company using

Notice they do NOT say they designed them in-house. That is why the exact wording matters, Zilog may be keen to give an impression, that is not quite reality.

Of course their chip can use Mentor IP, and still come from someone else. Check into the peripherals.

You asked the wrong question.

-jg

Reply to
j.m.granville

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