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Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking?

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Am 13.06.22 um 09:52 schrieb David Brown:

> 
> The cheapest microcontroller family I know of are from Padauk - they get 
> down to about $0.03 even in quite small quantities, with free toolchains 
> and available datasheets, appnotes, etc..  (Note that the references I 
> have seen are pre-Covid and before the current component availability 
> crisis, so things may have changed.)
> 

Before Corona, their cheapest, the PMS15A, was below 1 cent even in 
small quantitites. That was a device with PROM, though. AFAIR, devices 
with Flash started at 5 cent when bought in small quantitites. From 
their financial reports one could see that the average (i.e. across 
their whole range and all sales) price of their µC was also below 1 cent.
There is the free toolchain based on easypdkprog and SDCC, a full free C 
compiler. And there is the vendor supplied non-free but gratis MINI-C, 
which, despite the name, is just an IDE with an assembler with a little 
bit of C syntax sprinkled on top.

> 
> If you don't need to be quite so obsessive about the price, for $0.50 
> you should even be able to get 32-bit devices.  The choice of 
> peripherals and configuration is probably more important than the core - 
> if you can pick a device with the right pin drives, internal pull-ups or 
> pull-downs, that will save the cost of the device.

The Padauk approach is that you don't really need most peripherals. Just 
emulate them in software. If you need accurate timing, put the emulation 
on its own "core". Padauk has µC with hardware multithreading 
(implemented as a barrel processor). However, there are severe 
limitations that make it hard or unfeasible to have more than one "core" 
running C code (and I never implemented support for that in the free 
toolchain): https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.04633

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4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-12 18:44 -0700
  Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-13 09:52 +0200
    Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2022-06-13 22:11 +1000
    Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2022-06-14 07:46 +0200
  Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Stef <me@this.is.invalid> - 2022-06-13 14:47 +0200
    Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-14 08:34 -0700
      Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Stef <me@this.is.invalid> - 2022-06-14 23:29 +0200
        Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-15 08:55 +0200
          Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Stef <me@this.is.invalid> - 2022-06-15 09:25 +0200
          Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 10:38 +0200
            Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-15 15:20 +0200
            Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 06:53 -0700
              Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Uwe Bonnes <bon@hertz.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de> - 2022-06-15 14:12 +0000
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 17:11 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-15 17:20 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 09:12 -0700
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Hans-Bernhard Bröker <HBBroeker@t-online.de> - 2022-06-16 01:35 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 23:46 -0700
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-16 09:08 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-06-16 13:47 +0000
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2022-06-17 09:15 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Stef <me@this.is.invalid> - 2022-06-16 09:34 +0200
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-16 08:03 -0700
                Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? chris <chris-nospam@tridac.net> - 2022-06-17 01:05 +0100
              Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2022-06-15 17:16 +0200
  Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2022-06-14 07:51 +0200
    Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> - 2022-06-14 08:48 -0700
  Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2022-06-14 21:48 +0100
    Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking? Herbert Kleebauer <klee@unibwm.de> - 2022-06-17 13:36 +0200

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