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I maintain that most of the car's electronic guts (minus infotainment and auto-steer etc) could be done with a handful of 8051s. The problem is almost nobody i
by GeorgeTirebiter 5y ago
I maintain that most of the car's electronic guts (minus infotainment and auto-steer etc) could be done with a handful of 8051s. The problem is almost nobody it seems knows assembly anymore. The standards of CAN and LIN were created in the days of 8-bit MPUs, even I2C is quite old.
(I like assembly, but would never suggest it for a professional situation unless painted into some unforeseen corner, and assy would be the only way out.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- javcasas 5y agoIs there a 8051-based microcontroller with the usual FLASH memory and with tools to program it like a PLC? Hardware should be programmed like PLCs, we are just overcomplicating most hardware stuff by throwing OO & FP at it.
- codebje 5y agoSquillions of them. Microchip, Silicon Labs, Infineon, and Maxim all produce such µCs, like the Silicon Labs EFM8BB - up to 50MHz, a small handful of kb of program space, a smaller on-die RAM, off you go. Or pick a more specialised IC like the Cypress FX2LP family of USB controllers - they embed an 8051 core so you can apply firmware using cheap, widely available tools.
- 14u2c 5y agoAs far as I've seen the shortage as it relates to electric vehicles is due to a lack of power devices, such as high power MOSFETs, not logic ICs.
- jcims 5y agoThis is the one thing they can't do without. Pretty hard to switch 1000A at 400V 5,000 times a second.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoI would not get into a car implemented with 8051s. I entered the market on a project where an 8051 only had to manage a 2x16 character display, 16-key pad, and several motor/limit switches. The dang thing was challenged at that.
- seanp2k2 5y agoESP32 / STM32 can do a whole heck of a lot, they're getting popular in modular synths now too. AFAIK a lot of vehicles use RTOSes for anything related to driving / vehicle stability, but I think they can use mostly whatever for infotainment, and that "whatever" seems to be largely low / mid-range stuff running absolutely garbage software that only gets updated if NHTSA makes them.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoThat checks out. I've contemplated getting one of those CANbus/ESP32 combos but I'm just not feeling lucky enough to muck around with my car's network for grins.
- 01100011 5y agoSounds like shitty software. We did similar work with an 8051 20+ years ago and it did fine.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoNo, 8051 is just a sloppy piece of silicon. I wrote a symbolic linker and tokenizer for B-52 BASIC and an EPROM formatter so we could cross-develop on PC. We just had a busy little system and 8051 was not very reliable for anything realtime.
- novok 5y agoAFAIK there are many 40nm chips that are proper arm cpus that are not that hard to get, you don't need to get to 8051 levels of ancient.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoMy point wasn't to encourage 8051s in cars; it was to say that many, many types of fairly mundane MPUs can do the work needed for most of the car's subsystems. Yes, Cortex M0+ chips are just fine for this, and are (relatively) blazing fast. I know Tesla was able to pivot to different MPUs during the shortage, because the code is pretty much decently layered; so only the Low Level code to wrap the peripherals needed to change. It's true, it's hard to replace MOSFETs when you have 1KV / hundreds of amps needs --- however, it is possible to make MOSFET arrays using lower-capable parts. Obviously, infotainment and AI-ish tasks are not what I'm talking about.