32-bit Microcontroller for $1.00 -Guy Macon

Is this even news at this point??? Some two or three years ago I pointed out that the ARM chips were getting cheaper and cheaper (at that time around $2) commenting that there is getting to be no market for the common 8 bit CPU. There were a couple who pointed out that there are huge numbers of 8 bit devices used in the "invisible", mass applications where even $0.01 makes a difference. Of course those apps will always use 4 or 8 bit processors.

But the trend has been pretty obvious for some time now. Mostly it has been reported that the 16 bit parts are being skipped over migrating from 8 directly to 32 bit. I have also seen predictions that the 8 bit market will level off and start to decline although keeping huge numbers.

For designs that don't need to save every last penny, it really has gotten to the point that the 8 and 16 bit parts have little need. Maybe if power is the ultimate requirement a 32 bit part can't keep up with an 8 bit part, but even there the newer processes that are being used mostly with 32 bit parts are making them competitive in the lowest power apps too.

Rick

Processor

market:

100:

Kit:

board:

No sales numbers on their $1 device, which was rather a strange animal. Did anyone actually design that in ?

Other things you may have missed :

** Microchip did NOT choose the M3, instead went for the MIPS core

** Atmel offers ARM7, ARM9, AVR32, (and has also licensed M3)

** Freescale have chosen to also pitch 'peripheral compatible' 8 bit and 32 bit Coldfire variants. They see that the core does not actually matter that much anymore.....

** ST and Freescale do NOT pitch the M3 into Automotive - instead they _have_ recently released a SECOND SOURCED family, based on the PowerPC core.

Can you name any pin & peripheral compatible, second sourced M3 device ?

** Japanese suppliers, who are big in the 32 bit sector, tend to chose ARM only for ASIC

** Philips is calling their M3 family the LPC1000, suggests they expect the LPC2000 (ARM7) and LPC3000 (ARM9) to continue

** ARM9 devices are rolling now in large FLASH cores, faster than any M3 device.

Conclusion: Yes the M3 is significant, but it is a _very_ long way from dominating the MCU market, it is not even close to dominating the 32bit MCU market.

Of course, any such claim from Luminary's Chief Marketing Officer, is expected to be mostly marketdroid hyperbole :)

-jg

[...]

I suspect some devious google-ranking scheme :)

--

John Devereux

Log in just to get a datasheet? Yeah, right ...

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Those marketing guys only want to have a deep, personal, meaningful relationship with you, Joerg, that will surely be mutually beneficial. :-)

In comp.arch Joerg wrote: (Luminary Micro's website)

If you just keep clicking on "I really really don't want to register, just shut up already" you'll get a download link without having to register. Annoying, but far preferable to those sites that actually do force you to register (I'm looking at you, ARM.)

-a

Well, that might be, but I prefer manufacturers with a tad more professionalism. TI, Atmel, Microchip, Hitachi and so on.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

Which is far preferable to the ones that make you register then promise to email you the datasheet and never do. (I'm looking at you, NXP)

Which part of NXP does that ? I can download any PDF just fine - PDF access at NXP is good, it is the middle-ground, between the overview and detail, that NXP needs to work on!

I did find they have a nice uC selector as 'clickable pdf', that I suggested they make more visible, and it is now at:

With that, you can sidestep almost the entire web site ;)

-jg

I'm still finding niches for the MSP430 16-bitters. I've used them several times as smart peripherals for 32-bit chips and as stand-alone processors in some very low-power data loggers that store data on SD cards. They still seem to have about 1/10th the power requirement of an ATmel AT91SAM7 when clocked just fast enough to collect and store data.

I expect that the M3 chips will fall somewhere between the Atmel ARMs and the MSP430 in capability and power consumption. Those chips are probably worth a look----especially after all the time and money I've spent on ARM compilers. Learning a new peripheral set will be the tough part.

Mark Borgerson

I prefer openly admitting to google-ranking schemes...

Plus, I always like to see who has a newsreader that changes the Subject line (collapsing multiple spaces to one space, inserting a CR/LF word wrap...) instead of folowing the de-facto standard and leaving that line unchanged. :)

--
Guy Macon

RF.

A few months ago, I had to sign NDA just to peek at the datasheets a couple of weeks in advance of public release. Unfortunately, to have good battery saving feature, we have to go with 100 pins 64K devices. The 44 pins 32K LM3S101 will kill the battery in no time. We won't be able to use LMIs until they have better battery saving modes for the low end, not the high end.

I agree that the Cortex is going to be an important 32 bit part and may actually evolve into a 8051 type general purpose part it is unlikely that it will completely dominate.

The quest for computing power is now a lot about power performance and this is where the Cortex does well but will not in the long term dominate as instruction sets designed for machine generated software mature.

Regards,

-- Walter Banks Byte Craft Limited

snipped-for-privacy@bytecraft.com Canada

Aha... so each and every newsreader does it a bit differently, creating new thread titles for you. Sounds pretty devious to me :)

--

John Devereux

"M3 is significant" - wow, that's quite a change from what you said a few years ago :-)

Of course just about all of the MCU manufacturers have licensed the M3 since then as expected, including Atmel...

Wilco

Don't get too excited ;)

I would also call the Coldfire, SuperH, MIPS, PowerPCB, Numerous DSPs (and even the AVR32) also significant, but do NOT confuse 'being on the radar', with dominating a sector.

This recent news item, shows how much more power matters, than cores, these days....

"Texas Instruments (TI) is overhauling nearly all of its DSP lines with

15 new chips that slash power by up to 20X. In addition to cutting power, the new chips represent a number of firsts for TI, including the first chip to combine an ARM core with a floating-point DSP. As part of the rollout, TI is also re-uniting its fixed-point and floating-point C6000 families?two families that parted ways years ago."

?articleID=209400505

True, and NONE are yet offeringn pin-compatible second sources, but Freescale and ST ARE now offering PowerPC second sourcing, for their demanding Automotive customers.

-jg

This shows power matters to TI. Like someone already mentioned in this thread: TI's MSP430 series is as low power as you can get in todays microcontroller market. With all the competition moving to ARM, TI (and their competitors too) need to add something unique to their products which stands out in the crowd.

--
Programmeren in Almere?
E-mail naar nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)

Why would you think that new subject lines are some sort of advantage? NUsenet newsreaders and Google Groups both thread by references, not subject lines.

And doesn't the word "devious" imply that someone is harmed or at least slightly inconvenienced?

--
Guy Macon  Guy Macon 
Guy Macon  Guy Macon 
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