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In the 1980's the Intel 8031,8051,8052 were the #1 embedded processors (Its still in the keyboard your probably typing on) However the patents expired and its n

by boznz 9y ago

In the 1980's the Intel 8031,8051,8052 were the #1 embedded processors (Its still in the keyboard your probably typing on) However the patents expired and its now made by everyone else, but ironically not Intel! Intel currently has nothing for the smaller (non-operating system) embedded market which is still mostly 8-bit and low pin-count and as everyone has stated ARM has already won the fight for 32-bit (though I do also use PIC32 which is MIPS)

leggomylibro 9y ago
What about a 64-bit architecture for the Cortex-M market? If they could pull off some wizardry in focusing on energy efficiency, and maybe target peripheral functions involving GPU-like parallel processors for small-scale ML/AI/etc. purposes? I dunno, it seems like there might be a market for that sort of thing. You train your model, pop it on a chip that consumes microwatts per megahertz? Something like that could be appealing. It might also be impossible. I don't design chips. But I do think targeting both mobility and parallel processing could be cool. Maybe something like what Parallella is doing.
- baybal2 9y ago
  64 bit is expensive on memory bandwidth (and on size of memory as such,) and memory bandwidth costs a lot in terms of die size relative to microscopic size of MCU cores. Most of MCU applications don't do much of computations as such
- boznz 9y ago
  64-Bit architectures and GPUs are totally different beasts requiring MMU's and OS's and whole development teams. My last project used a 14 pin processor with 195 lines of bare metal C code compiling to 486 bytes of Flash memory and running on an internal 32Khz clock. This is more the target 8051 market though I must admit some cortex M0 processors are getting as cheap to use here. The Propeller Chip is awesome (no interrupts and 8 processors is a really cool concept) but at $8 it is going against the big boys (Freescale/ST/Microchip) with their more flexible memory, power management and rich peripheral sets. I would love for one of the big players to licence the propeller core but it wont happen.
  - boznz 9y ago
    .. Forgot the propeller 1 core IS open source now and still no takers, real lack of vision out there.

by boznz 9y ago

leggomylibro 9y ago

What about a 64-bit architecture for the Cortex-M market? If they could pull off some wizardry in focusing on energy efficiency, and maybe target peripheral functions involving GPU-like parallel processors for small-scale ML/AI/etc. purposes? I dunno, it seems like there might be a market for that sort of thing. You train your model, pop it on a chip that consumes microwatts per megahertz? Something like that could be appealing. It might also be impossible. I don't design chips. But I do think targeting both mobility and parallel processing could be cool. Maybe something like what Parallella is doing.

baybal2 9y ago
64 bit is expensive on memory bandwidth (and on size of memory as such,) and memory bandwidth costs a lot in terms of die size relative to microscopic size of MCU cores. Most of MCU applications don't do much of computations as such
boznz 9y ago
64-Bit architectures and GPUs are totally different beasts requiring MMU's and OS's and whole development teams. My last project used a 14 pin processor with 195 lines of bare metal C code compiling to 486 bytes of Flash memory and running on an internal 32Khz clock. This is more the target 8051 market though I must admit some cortex M0 processors are getting as cheap to use here. The Propeller Chip is awesome (no interrupts and 8 processors is a really cool concept) but at $8 it is going against the big boys (Freescale/ST/Microchip) with their more flexible memory, power management and rich peripheral sets. I would love for one of the big players to licence the propeller core but it wont happen.
- boznz 9y ago
  .. Forgot the propeller 1 core IS open source now and still no takers, real lack of vision out there.