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Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
- tasty_freeze 2y agoI can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
- bsder 2y agoThey probably don't test. Yield is likely high enough that failures are the responsibility of the customer. Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads. It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling.
- my123 2y agoNo, they _are_ tested during manufacturing. > Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads A 32-bit CPU is way too big for this price point still.
- nick7376182 2y agoWith small chips like this do you think they would test at a high sampling level?
- selcuka 2y ago> A 32-bit CPU is way too big for this price point still. Not sure what you mean by "this price point" but CH32V003 is RISC-V and around 10 cents. It is only 6 times more expensive.
- RantyDave 2y agoYeah, that's a savage bastard too. 48MHz, DMA, UART, I2C, SPI, a sleep mode ... 16KB flash and 2KB ram. Certainly enough to run something with a UI, probably enough to implement a basic software defined radio, could probably do some neat tricks when buried inside a USB cable. I mean, clearly we're at the "splash the cash" end of the Chinese processor market here but at least you get good bang for buck.
- duskwuff 2y ago> It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling. Pragmatically speaking, that architecture already exists -- it's the 8051. (This part is a PIC clone, but 8051 is also extremely common.) RISC-V has promise for larger microcontrollers, but really tiny ones like these (48 bytes RAM, 1KB ROM) are better off with an 8-bit architecture.
- kjs3 2y agoYa...8051s are literally everywhere, and there's a vast ecosystem of code and programmer talent to draw on.
- dragontamer 2y agoYes but... modern 8051 has grossly different peripherals / drivers than the original. Most of your code / effort will be in getting these peripherals to work. A ton of microcontroller programming is a simple if(voltage>0.5V) then {setup peripherals to do Y}. In fact, voltage > 0.5V is a peripheral (aka: the Analog Comparator + DAC loopback) on most uCs today. So in practice its: "If (analog comparator) then {do Y}". Except "if analog comparator" is itself an interrupt that you put into the interrupt table, so that the processor can sleep for minimum power usage. So really its all just configuration of interrupt table handlers, configuration of various peripherals, and then a massive amounts of sleep.
- zer00eyz 2y agoThe first link in the article is to a .10 RISCV part. https://zeptobars.com/en/read/Nyquest-Technology-NY8A051H-8051-smallest-microcontroller https://zeptobars.com/en/read/Nyquest-Technology-NY8A051H-80... The RPI2040 is under a buck in bulk (the chip). The Pine Ox64, The Milk-V duo and the RPI packages are all interesting products (at a sub 10 bucks each). The MILK-V duo S is very appealing (form factor wise). If they ever mange to get POE/HDMI in version out it will be a killer product (even more so if they get all that into a sub 20 buck price point).
- Aurornis 2y agoEverything is automated. Testing a simple micro with few pins can be extremely fast. Look up some modern factory tour videos. The RGB LED factory videos are interesting to watch. You can see how the bulk of the work is completely automated. Once the machines are set up, you let them run and collect the output.
- petra 2y agoMy guess is that testing complexity is a function of the number of gates, so it doesnt matter too much if they are on a big die or many small dies. Also testing is an extremly paralell process, scaling with the number of connections you can connect to the tested wafer, and recent technology(from testing hbm ram) can really scale that: https://www.formfactor.com/applications/high-volume-test-on-wafer/advanced-packaging/ https://www.formfactor.com/applications/high-volume-test-on-...
- RantyDave 2y agoEnglish data sheet: https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6.pdf https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6....
- dragontamer 2y ago38kHz support for IR is a nifty feature (this is the "TV Remote" signal). Its a real niche, this is probably the cheapest thing that can make a TV Remote. A couple of AA batteries and you'll have 5 years of life. Forget "sleep", a lot of TV Remotes just go fully off after each button press. When a button is pressed, reset the computer, figure out which button, send the IR signal at 38kHz and then turn off again. The end.
- RantyDave 2y agoI see these $miniscule microcontrollers are being more or less the end of the road for ASIC's, apart from those that have high performance requirements. Like you say - with 1kb "rom" and 48 whole bytes of ram you can make a TV remote, or the thing that debounces a switch, maybe something that decodes SP/DIF, control a battery charger, drive a vape ... all sorts of edge 'tasks' can become just one SKU and a couple of hundred bytes of code. Wild.
- dragontamer 2y agoYes but... You consolidate support for different systems... much like how this chip has a dedicated 38kHz generator, other chips can have more flexible timers that support other frequencies, dedicated UARTs, USARTs, I2C, SPI that leads to better communication to other devices. For example: > control a battery charger Okay, to make a battery charger requires: 1. Current measurement. Current measurement requires a shut-resistor (ex: 0.1Ohms) and an ADC. But the ADC needs to be able to measure micro-volts if you want any level of accuracy (1mA across 0.1 Ohms == 0.1mA aka 100uV of change) This is possible with either 16+ bit ADCs, or alternatively an ADC with x16 or more gain (effectively gaining "4-bits of zoom"). 2. Alternatively, you can have Chopper/Instrumentation OpAmps that voltage-multiply the current shunt up to a level that your ADCs can see it. (Instrumentation OpAmps and Chopper OpAmps have low Bandwidth-Gain but very accurate zeros aka Voltage Offset statistics). 3. You'll need a high-speed dual-timer and XOR to implement PWM with dead-zones to control two MOSFETs to make your buck (or boost) converter. You can turn on the "low side" MOSFET at the same time as the high-side MOSFET otherwise you literally just short power to ground, a few microseconds of dead-time is all you need to keep things safe (and utilizing flywheel diodes for those brief microseconds is fine). Higher-speed Buck/boost converters (ex: 2MHz) are possible but a fundemental timer much higher than that. Ex: if you want 5-bits of control over the 2MHz PWM, you'll need a 64MHz timer. 4. 64MHz timers are possible with Phase-locked-loops that multiply your fundamental frequency (ex: an 8MHz base clock) to the much faster speeds. ------------ So if we're talking about the cheapest equipment that controls a battery charger effectively, in a flexible way that other people can use the tidbits, we'll need: * 64MHz timers / PWM at the 64MHz speed. (~6-bits of control over 1MHz PWM... to implement a possible PID controller or maybe just PI controller (no-D needed??) ) * Current-measurement circuitry (ADCs at 16-bits and/or a 16x Gain ADC at 12-bits, or OpAmps) * Complex enough timers to handle "dead time". This is not easy and is a rare feature in my experience. * Analog Comparators to sense the voltage going into the battery and perform logic. ADCs could work in theory but a dedicated Analog Comparator is cheaper, easier, and more reliable. * Ideally temperature control on-board, to provide safety. RP2040 fails because it doesn't have accurate enough ADCs (thus requiring a 2nd or 3rd chip for the Instrumentation-Amp to amplify the current high enough). There are a large variety of 8-bit chips that have powerful enough timers + powerful enough analog equipment to handle all of this BTW. STM32 cheats by just providing lots of OpAmps, as does TI's MSPM0 line. A lot of this stuff is quite easy with OpAmps actually. There's a few PIC and AVR chips that have powerful enough timers as well. ---------- Yes, even something as simple as a battery charger has a surprising amount of logic for the buck/boost behavior. Its something you can do from scratch with a uC and Microcontroller though. But traditionally speaking, you build such circuits out of transistors and OpAmps instead. Today's uCs have all the right stuff in the right places (IE: 3x free OpAmps on the TI MSPM0) that solve large sets of these problems.
- alright2565 2y agoHow does programming on this thing work? The datasheet doesn't go into very much detail, except there's SDI, SDO, SCK, and Vpp pins.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoLike an 8051, I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCS-51 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCS-51 ny8a051h
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kjs3 2y agoIt's not an 8051. Read the datasheet.
- BarsMonster 2y agoHehe, I was also tricked into thinking it's an 8051-compatible :-)
- userbinator 2y agoAt these sizes, the packaging is probably a significant fraction of the cost. They may also offer a bare die version at < $0.01 each. Despite its name, this is not an 8051. Looks like this competes with the PIC10F200 which costs dozens of times more yet has a similar "RISC" (that's what they call it, but it's more like an 8-bit accumulator architecture) ISA and general layout.
- nine_k 2y agoPackaging is always a significant fraction of the cost. It can be 20-30% for a typical MCU part, and nearly half of the cost for a complex chiplet-based CPU (where the internal assembly is indeed complex). I suspect that manufacturer's profit margins are lower than that, especially for simpler MCU parts.
- metadat 2y agoImpressive price point. I'd like to understand, what can you realistically do with these?
- dgacmu 2y agoThe 48 bytes of sram are enough to encode several state machines. It has pwm and dedicated IR signalling output, but no ADC for input. It's generally designed to be a very simple controller-of-things. Push an up button, increase the pwm output up to some limit, etc. remote controls, fans, etc.,
- zootboy 2y agoIndeed. I've seen a retail toy use a similar microcontroller from Nyquest to accept infrared control commands and drive some H-bridge drivers to make a simple, cheap RC car.
- selcuka 2y agoMake a LED candle? https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/a-led-candle-based-on-the-3-cent-mcu/ https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/a-led-candle-based-...
- eternityforest 2y agoIt looks like this chip is powerful enough to run a more "cinematic" looking gust/wind/topple/rise flicker model: https://blackdice.github.io/Candle/ https://blackdice.github.io/Candle/
- dragontamer 2y agoThe 38kHz signal support clearly indicates that this is a TV Remote Control chip.
- cpldcpu 2y agoYeah, you can find them in all kinds of low-cost remote controls: https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/9838991700773145118.file-1700773145085-572960022 https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/9838991700773145118.file-1700...
- dmitrygr 2y agoAnother clone of PIC12 ISA it seems. These are common
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- proee 2y agoWhat would be a comparable early computer with the same computational power? Amazing to think how a machine the size of a room is now only a penny!
- nick7376182 2y agoThis chip: 8 MHz, 8 bit processing 1K x 14 bits EPROM. 48 bytes SRAM. 6 general purpose I/O pins (GPIO), PB[5:0], with independent direction control. In comparison to the usual suspects like Apollo guidance computer or TI-83, it has a higher clock speed but shorter word length and extremely limited ram and memory. Precisely due to the cost engineering - this is meant to run simple, limited size programs.
- YZF 2y agoIt's an 8-bit processor running at up to 20Mhz. Maybe an Apple-II would be a comparison. Likely the 6502 had a more powerful instruction set. Apple II had a 1Mhz 6502.
- dragontamer 2y agoThe 8051, first released in 1980, the 8051 effectively created the microcontroller market. 4kB ROM and 128B of SRAM for the original 8051. It always was on the small side. --------- We have to go earlier than 1980 but I'm not quite familiar with all of those computers.
- actinium226 2y agoIt seems to use 1ma when on, so if you hooked this up to one of the larger smartphone batteries at 5000 mah, this could run for 200 days. I'm not sure what you'd do with that, but I think as power consumption drops to 0 on these sorts of thing it might make some remote sensing applications cheaper/easier to deploy, if you could just deploy it with a battery and forget about it for a year or two.
- tambourine_man 2y agoAdd in a solar cell and it’s always on, effectively
- ComputerGuru 2y agoIsn’t that rather a lot of current for what it is? I didn’t read the datasheet but I imagine it has to have a lower power mode than that. Much larger MCUs can manage an average power consumption far lower and power off the same battery for periods measured in years, not days. This is simple enough you’d think you’d be able to power it off an EM field directly!
- actinium226 2y agoIf you slow it down to 1MHz you can get it down to 0.5 ma. If you switch to low frequency oscillation at 32kHz it gets into low-double-digit microamps.
- dragontamer 2y agoYeah that's high, considering that a lot of 8-bitters are also in that ballpark and we haven't talked sleep states yet (with a few X00nA class sleepers out there). In any case, Tomagachi is famously a 32kHz toy. There's a lot you can do at 32kHz.
- HyulianGrader 2y agoI can't be bothered running the datasheet through a translator but there seem to be sleep modes at 2.5uA and 200nA.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoDo you have to get these programmed at the factory?
- petra 2y agoProgramming is done by selecting a memory address and burning the fuses behind it, using higher voltage. Or it can be done via laser, scanning the wafer and burning the fuses.
- BarsMonster 2y agoNo, it's field-programmable. But you can only do it once.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- claxo 2y agoThe page linked to buy the product say 10 pieces in stock, and 'not recomended for new designs'. Following the link in that page to manufacturer and then to 'microcontroller units' shows 14 products, all 'not recomended for new designs', except for the ones with zero stock.