4 ms·

I just read an article recently about how 6502-based chips are used inside of satellite receiver boxes. I wonder if it's just a function of the time. I imagin

I just read an article recently about how 6502-based chips are used inside of satellite receiver boxes. I wonder if it's just a function of the time. I imagine anything designed new now would use an ARM based microcontroller but likely when many of these systems were originally designed those were much less common and more expensive.

tzs 5y ago
I'd expect that there are still a lot of new designs where something like an 8-bit microcontroller such as an AVR makes more sense than using something ARM based.
- mlyle 5y ago
  It's getting harder and harder to find places where this is true. ARM Cortex M0/M0+ blows AVR out of the water, and is usually cheaper except for the very lowest end AVR parts. Generally will use less power, too. And that's assuming your unit counts are so high that firmware developer time is free. Of course, it's getting impossible to find 5V VCC ARM parts, so that's something that would steer you towards AVR if your system is really a bunch simpler by having a 5V micro.
  - milesvp 5y ago
    This is not strictly true. Many AVR chips can handle more computation than their clockspeed would suggest due to some really nice assembly codes that allow for common DSP calculations. I ported an AVR code base to a cortex M4 last year, and some of the inlined asm didn’t translate. I ended up having to use inlined C instead. So, my 120Mhz M4 chip struggled to do what a 90Mhz AVR did no problem.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Note that it seems you're talking about AVR32, then, and not an 8-bit AVR like we were talking about. AVR32 was neat, but has lost all commercial relevance.
      - milesvp 5y ago
        Oh, yeah, good call. I guess I would be surprised to see significant DSP related asm in any 8 bit processor.
  - puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago
    You can get Attiny to sleep at 6uA with a watchdog, and ~120nA with an external interrupt. Can M0 match that? Genuinely curious, I don't have much experience with ARM.
- userbinator 5y ago
  AVR is actually rather expensive, relatively speaking. I believe it's only popular due to Arduino. Even the various PICs will be cheaper, and of course there's still a lot of (very fast) 8051 variants as well as 4-bit MCUs at the ultra-low-cost level (<$0.01).
grishka 5y ago
I remember reading that space probes, including Mars rovers, use what amounts to a PowerPC G3 but in a radiation-hardened modification.

tzs 5y ago

I'd expect that there are still a lot of new designs where something like an 8-bit microcontroller such as an AVR makes more sense than using something ARM based.

mlyle 5y ago
It's getting harder and harder to find places where this is true. ARM Cortex M0/M0+ blows AVR out of the water, and is usually cheaper except for the very lowest end AVR parts. Generally will use less power, too. And that's assuming your unit counts are so high that firmware developer time is free. Of course, it's getting impossible to find 5V VCC ARM parts, so that's something that would steer you towards AVR if your system is really a bunch simpler by having a 5V micro.
- milesvp 5y ago
  This is not strictly true. Many AVR chips can handle more computation than their clockspeed would suggest due to some really nice assembly codes that allow for common DSP calculations. I ported an AVR code base to a cortex M4 last year, and some of the inlined asm didn’t translate. I ended up having to use inlined C instead. So, my 120Mhz M4 chip struggled to do what a 90Mhz AVR did no problem.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Note that it seems you're talking about AVR32, then, and not an 8-bit AVR like we were talking about. AVR32 was neat, but has lost all commercial relevance.
    - milesvp 5y ago
      Oh, yeah, good call. I guess I would be surprised to see significant DSP related asm in any 8 bit processor.
- puzzlingcaptcha 5y ago
  You can get Attiny to sleep at 6uA with a watchdog, and ~120nA with an external interrupt. Can M0 match that? Genuinely curious, I don't have much experience with ARM.
userbinator 5y ago
AVR is actually rather expensive, relatively speaking. I believe it's only popular due to Arduino. Even the various PICs will be cheaper, and of course there's still a lot of (very fast) 8051 variants as well as 4-bit MCUs at the ultra-low-cost level (<$0.01).

grishka 5y ago

I remember reading that space probes, including Mars rovers, use what amounts to a PowerPC G3 but in a radiation-hardened modification.