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Re: 4 Bit MCUs, Still Alive and Kicking?

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Il 15/06/2022 08:55, David Brown ha scritto:
> On 14/06/2022 23:29, Stef wrote:
> 
>> Nowadays we use 32-bit (arm) for almost everything. The current
>> availability issues have made us look into other directions, but that is
>> all too much trouble. Just hoping things will get better in the not too
>> distant future.
>>
> 
> These days the choice of microcontroller is often determined by what you 
> can get hold of, not by price, functionality, familiarity or any other 
> traditional criteria.  It is frustrating, to say the least.

Yes, it's frustrating. Here we are spending most of the time to redesign 
some boards because of MCU shortage.

Two times we ordered the MCU with a long delivery time (around 10 
months), purchased another MCU that was available in quantity for 
production and started to redesign PCB and software for the new MCU.

We were sure to have the new fully-functional board much before the 
delivery of the old MCU, but this wasn't the case.

Patching the firmware for the new MCU, rewriting drivers, fighting with 
new errata, different SDK of the manufacturers and so on was a difficult 
task. Eventually, we arrived to have the new board a couple of weeks 
before the delivery of the old MCU, so decided to start the production 
of old boards.

Two times we lost money purchasing new MCUs that we didn't use, and lost 
a lot of time working on the new MCU, stopping the reasearch and 
development of new things and products.

Do you have similar experience?

> Small ARM cores cost the manufacturer a few cents and can have extremely 
> low power - unless you have strong backwards compatibility reasons or 
> very specific requirements, it is rare for the "best" choice to be 
> anything other than an ARM for most boards.
> 
> But RISC-V is increasing, and I really hope some big names start using 
> it in their microcontrollers.  It offers more scope than ARM for 
> differentiation amongst products while keeping a common basis, and it's 
> not healthy for the market to be so dominated by a single core.  (Look 
> at the PC market - it's all just highly polished turds.)

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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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