3 ms·

No need to speculate: the market data has been showing a move toward 32-bit just as you thought would happen. https://semiengineering.com/mcu-sales-up-in-2017-

No need to speculate: the market data has been showing a move toward 32-bit just as you thought would happen. https://semiengineering.com/mcu-sales-up-in-2017-and-2018/ https://semiengineering.com/mcu-sales-up-in-2017-and-2018/ As vvanders says, the hard data shows plenty of the market is still maximizing profit by using 8-bitters (33%) and 16-bitters (26%). That's a combined 59% of microcontrollers a 32-/64-bit-only language would be leaving on the table in terms of deployment. Even ATS language, much more difficult than Rust, has already been deployed on 8-bitters. http://metasepi.org/doc/metasepi-icfp2015-arduino-ats.pdf http://metasepi.org/doc/metasepi-icfp2015-arduino-ats.pdf Hopefully, Rust stays adding whatever features are necessary to support this stuff. If not, the Haskell crowd can always grab it up with DSL's like Ivory: https://ivorylang.org/ivory-introduction.html https://ivorylang.org/ivory-introduction.html EDIT to add: A link about 4-bit MCU market that still exists for anyone wondering what that part of the pie chart was about. http://www.ganssle.com/rants/is4bitsdead.htm http://www.ganssle.com/rants/is4bitsdead.htm

Ericson2314 9y ago
Glad to hear it! Good languages as you agree have the potential to keep dev and material cost down, so there's no trade-off. But people seem to hate learning...anything, and was worried the market had already gone to too powerful devices out of laziness. Glad to hear the battle is not yet lost!
jabl 9y ago
Knowing very little about the low-end micro-controller manufacturing economics, isn't there some kind of lower bound limit where the marginal cost of the chip itself is utterly dwarfed by the cost of the pins and packaging? Sure, a 32-bit chip is bound to be bigger than an equivalent 8 or 16-bit one, but e.g. the pulpino project has designed a 32-bit one using only 11.6 kGE. Not very much nowadays. For comparison, according to someone from Atmel, the AVR core is 12k gates, and megaAVR is 20k gates (https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showthread/comp.arch.embedded/14362-1.php https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showthread/comp.arch.embedde... ).
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  I have no idea. They've probably optimized the hell out of it in ways we can't understand. I mean, I thought about getting academics to cover cost of putting Leon3 or RISC-V on a cutting-edge node where 32-bit would be so cheap FOSS could undercut them. They'd need to do peripherals, too, but EE students always need projects to learn with. :) The MOSIS runs I saw at the time had packaging alone at $10-20 a chip. I know it goes down for higher volume but how low can I get it on a new product doing maybe 10,000/units a year? Well, let me show you how low they get it so you know what your reusable-for-better-products micro would compete with: http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchID=1014&popular=1 http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchI... The smallest one is designed, masked, printed on silicon, packaged and sold in 5k quantities at 24 cents a chip at a profit! That's nuts! I can only imagine what the 4-bitters cost. The cheapest 32-bitter I found were 32-bit NXP's at 10,000 units for about 50 cents. So, they're getting there. It's an understatement, though, to say the manufacturing costs are highly competitive in this sector. :)

Ericson2314 9y ago

Glad to hear it! Good languages as you agree have the potential to keep dev and material cost down, so there's no trade-off. But people seem to hate learning...anything, and was worried the market had already gone to too powerful devices out of laziness. Glad to hear the battle is not yet lost!

jabl 9y ago

Knowing very little about the low-end micro-controller manufacturing economics, isn't there some kind of lower bound limit where the marginal cost of the chip itself is utterly dwarfed by the cost of the pins and packaging? Sure, a 32-bit chip is bound to be bigger than an equivalent 8 or 16-bit one, but e.g. the pulpino project has designed a 32-bit one using only 11.6 kGE. Not very much nowadays. For comparison, according to someone from Atmel, the AVR core is 12k gates, and megaAVR is 20k gates (https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showthread/comp.arch.embedded/14362-1.php https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showthread/comp.arch.embedde... ).

nickpsecurity 9y ago
I have no idea. They've probably optimized the hell out of it in ways we can't understand. I mean, I thought about getting academics to cover cost of putting Leon3 or RISC-V on a cutting-edge node where 32-bit would be so cheap FOSS could undercut them. They'd need to do peripherals, too, but EE students always need projects to learn with. :) The MOSIS runs I saw at the time had packaging alone at $10-20 a chip. I know it goes down for higher volume but how low can I get it on a new product doing maybe 10,000/units a year? Well, let me show you how low they get it so you know what your reusable-for-better-products micro would compete with: http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchID=1014&popular=1 http://www.microchip.com/ParamChartSearch/chart.aspx?branchI... The smallest one is designed, masked, printed on silicon, packaged and sold in 5k quantities at 24 cents a chip at a profit! That's nuts! I can only imagine what the 4-bitters cost. The cheapest 32-bitter I found were 32-bit NXP's at 10,000 units for about 50 cents. So, they're getting there. It's an understatement, though, to say the manufacturing costs are highly competitive in this sector. :)