Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has any comments on National's COP8, CompactRisc and CP3000 processors?
Their primary focus seems to be on the analog components now but the flash micros are still readily available.
Any hope for a revival of new parts and a future for their micros?
regards,
John Strupat
CompactRisc
On the COP8 front, I think these products are in maintenance mode. I haven't seen any new product announcements, and I don't think they're seeking new customers. The development tools (ICEs) are discontinued, also. Metalink gave all the source for the host-side tools to NS, and now NS maintains it. I don't think you can buy the hardware any more.
The situation when I left National in 1998 was that National management did not allow the microcontroller group to do standard CR16 mictrocontrollers, only ASSPs, idally only sold to a single customer.
The applications people told management, that the original CR16 (with the CAN controller) was an Airbag controller ASSP and thus they were allowed to design a general purpose micro.
The CR16 design team resided in Herzlia in Tel Aviv and I think this design centre was sold to AMD.
The CR16 could have been a success if it was designed inside a company which had a clue about the microcontroller market.
I think it has little future at this time.
Best Regards, Ulf Samuelsson. Ulf at atmel dot com These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Nordic AB.
Yes, and when they spun off the 32-bit CPU business, their margins improved, and that left the uC in rather no-mans land. Thus you have an Analog mindset company, doing well in analog, so the digital section will not have a great future... The CP3000 look to have more of a niche, as they are a CPU second, and communications devices first.
-jg
Ulf, do you know what happened to the GCC port of the CR16? IIRC they were planning to release it for inclusion in the official GCC distribution but that never happened. I exchanged several emails with people there at Tel Aviv and they were very purposive about the CR16.
CR16 is a nice architecture but support was -> 0. I guess HCS12, M16C or even MSP430 dominate that niche now.
Regards.
-- /"We're just sitting here trying to put our PCjrs PabloBleyerKocik / in a pile and burn them. And the damn things won't pbleyer / burn. That's the only thing IBM did right with it @embedded.cl / - they made it flameproof." - William Bowman (1983)
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