trend of "ARM"... will this replace all other micro-controller and ...

[Chris Hills]

On the other hand, the price of ARM chips will continue to drop as the
technology improves. The Philips ARM chip is around $5 in quantity
now. In three years expect it to break $2 with less memory if the
market continues to develop.

I will bet a years salary you are wrong.

Of course you don't need an ARM to control your microwave. But many 8
bit apps will be done with 32 bit chips in the near future because they
can offer more features for the same system price.

in some cases but not in the majority.


/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/ [email protected] www.phaedsys.org \/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

 

[Jim Granville]

I will bet a years salary you are wrong.

Brave move.
rickman just said less memory, and did not give the qty column .
Mask ROM devices could easily get sub $2.

DSP devices are doing this already - FLASH for development
and medium volumes, and ROM for high volume products,
needing stable code in both senses of the term.

-jg

 

[rickman]

Erm, no, I respectfully think that you have that one bass-ackwards. The
reason there are games on cellphones is because digital phones needed a
fairly frisky CPU and plenty of memory for DSPizing and realtime data
processing, crypto, etc and someone realized that this hardware could be
used for an occasional frivol, being totally unused while there is no call
in progress.

With the modern genre of phones, this has come one step further because
marketing has looked at the possibility of selling downloadable software
with a view to someday making cellular service providers turn a profit. But
the feature was initially a side-effect. I even recall interviews with Nokia
engineers who said as much.

Having worked in electronic toys and consumer appliances for most of my
recent career, I can say categorically that $0.10 per chip is often money
wasted, and practically always money marketing will NOT permit you to spend,
unless it is for a feature that is specifically required to implement some
bullet point off the product roadmap. For low-volume projects, other factors
dominate, of course.

I don't think you understand my point. I am not talking about some
frill that an engineer wants to add. I am saying that marketing always
wants to put more into a product. If the incremental cost is very low,
then those "frills" will start to be added.

Of course no one will use a 32 bit processor in a greeting card as you
see them today. But when the cost is low enough to allow, you will see
32 bit processors in even disposable things like digital ink
newspapers.

The issue in the cell phone is that the game takes up code storage
space. That is an added cost unless you say "there is spare space".
But at some point of cell phone development that game pushed the size of
the flash up to the next notch or required another round of code
reduction to make it all fit. Nothing is free, but often the cost is
low enough.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

[email protected]
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[rickman]

Brave move.
rickman just said less memory, and did not give the qty column .
Mask ROM devices could easily get sub $2.

DSP devices are doing this already - FLASH for development
and medium volumes, and ROM for high volume products,
needing stable code in both senses of the term.

Especially since he doesn't know what I make a year...

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

[email protected]
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[Wumpus]

Hi,

What's wrong with GCC?

It is absolutely everything but unreliable, the chance that bugs are
found and eradicated is very high, because it is used much more than
most commericial compilers (possibly except MS stuff, but I wouldn't
call that better)

Another advantage of GCC is that it is portable between architectures,
if you decide to switch to another processor or playform you can still
use gcc.
You'd have to buy and port all your code when using a CPU or platform
dependent commercial compiler.

I can't think of any disadvantages of GCC except it is quite difficult
to set up. Once setup it works like a charm though..

Wumpus

 

[Lewin A.R.W. Edwards]

I don't think you understand my point. I am not talking about some
frill that an engineer wants to add. I am saying that marketing always
wants to put more into a product. If the incremental cost is very low,

No, I don't think you understand MY point The marketroids - let's take
toys for instance - have a range of trucks, say, nd they want to add one
more product to that range. They come to the design people, who make a huge
list of possible features. The engineers implement a prototype with some
subset - perhaps a large subset - of those features. The marketing people
then say "Great! Now make it for $x, and take out whatever features are
required to achieve that!". This is not theory, it's bitter experience of
how the mass-market consumer electronics industry works (except for very
small companies). You simply cannot persuade marketing people to throw in
extra features after the fact unless they are /literally/ free.

$0.10, by the way, is a massive cost factor in an electronic toy. I have
spent upwards of two weeks trying to find a way to use two $0.0025 resistors
instead of one $0.05 capacitor (in a toy with SRP $12.95), the end effect of
which was to cut out the entire feature that required this capacitor, rather
than spend $0.05. I can project from this that in a $79.95 microwave oven, a
$0.10 BOM increase is still very significant, and days will cheerfully be
spent to shave it out.

 

[rickman]

No, I don't think you understand MY point The marketroids - let's take
toys for instance - have a range of trucks, say, nd they want to add one
more product to that range. They come to the design people, who make a huge
list of possible features. The engineers implement a prototype with some
subset - perhaps a large subset - of those features. The marketing people
then say "Great! Now make it for $x, and take out whatever features are
required to achieve that!". This is not theory, it's bitter experience of
how the mass-market consumer electronics industry works (except for very
small companies). You simply cannot persuade marketing people to throw in
extra features after the fact unless they are /literally/ free.

$0.10, by the way, is a massive cost factor in an electronic toy. I have
spent upwards of two weeks trying to find a way to use two $0.0025 resistors
instead of one $0.05 capacitor (in a toy with SRP $12.95), the end effect of
which was to cut out the entire feature that required this capacitor, rather
than spend $0.05. I can project from this that in a $79.95 microwave oven, a
$0.10 BOM increase is still very significant, and days will cheerfully be
spent to shave it out.

I understand. But an $80 microwave is not a $13 toy. The toy is
planned with a well defined set of features that fit the price window.
A microwave will have more flexibility to *plan in* features if the cost
is not significant. How many microwaves do you find that *don't* have a
menu of standard foods or other features that could be left out and
still not impact the basic funtion of a microwave? The cheapest one I
see in Walmart still has those features. I expect the couple of extra
pads on the keypad alone increase the cost by $0.10.

But enough. There will always be products that do not have *any* use
for a 32 processor no matter how small the incremental cost. Just as we
still have 4 bit apps now when the cost difference is very slight. But
clearly the trend will change as the cost of the 32 bit parts comes
down. I expect the 8 bit parts will only dominate for a few more
years.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

[email protected]
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX