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> ATtiny814 Why do people still use these ancient chips?

by IshKebab 1y ago

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
childintime 1y ago
5V devices continue popular.
addaon 1y ago
They're cheap, robust, readily available, super easy to develop for, have a well-chosen set of peripherals that can reduce BOM even further (e.g. the CCL)… what's not to like?
- IshKebab 1y ago
  They have the same price and availability as Cortex M0 chips, are more difficult to develop for (8-bit AVR ouch), and seem to have a similar number of peripherals as any microcontroller. The RP2350 is the same price and several orders of magnitude more capable for example. Really though, how many of these is he making? 3? Cost isn't a factor.
  - addaon 1y ago
    > are more difficult to develop for (8-bit AVR ouch) I think this just comes down to philosophy. ARM gives you a way richer tool-chain… and you need it. The complexity to do anything skyrockets. You have a compiler in the loop so achieving deterministic performance is much more complicated... not to mention caches. The tooling for doing statistical analysis is infinitely better; but just sitting down with a pencil and doing static analysis will always be both simpler and more accurate. For cases where you're writing thousands of lines, I too will generally prefer ARM -- but if you're just writing a couple hundred instructions, assembly is just less to think about. Similarly philosophical is "more capable" -- an RP can handle many more use cases, I agree, but if both handle a given use case, with the same quality, then neither is more capable /for that use case/. And the one that achieves that use case at quality with the simpler implementation is, in my philosophy, preferable. Also, while there are equivalents to the CCL in other processor families, it's by no means universal; and it's not at all rare that the CCL saves one or two external chips.
  - chrisjj 1y ago
    > several orders of magnitude more capable I'm looking forward to seeing a LoRa texter that's several orders of magnitude more capable /i
johnsondavies 1y ago
The ATtiny814 is hardly an ancient chip. It's a member of Microchip's TinyAVR 1-Series that was released in 2017 and still being developed, with the 2-Series being released in 2020/2021. Perhaps you're confusing it with the older ATtiny841 (released in 2012), which was an upgrade of the original ATtiny84.
numpad0 1y ago
If people kept buying ATMega328P to control intergalactic subspace modems, that is what gets made and sold. These things run primitive C code at practically infinite speed. That's all that matters.
chrisjj 1y ago
Why not?

> ATtiny814 Why do people still use these ancient chips?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

childintime 1y ago

5V devices continue popular.

addaon 1y ago

They're cheap, robust, readily available, super easy to develop for, have a well-chosen set of peripherals that can reduce BOM even further (e.g. the CCL)… what's not to like?

IshKebab 1y ago
They have the same price and availability as Cortex M0 chips, are more difficult to develop for (8-bit AVR ouch), and seem to have a similar number of peripherals as any microcontroller. The RP2350 is the same price and several orders of magnitude more capable for example. Really though, how many of these is he making? 3? Cost isn't a factor.
- addaon 1y ago
  > are more difficult to develop for (8-bit AVR ouch) I think this just comes down to philosophy. ARM gives you a way richer tool-chain… and you need it. The complexity to do anything skyrockets. You have a compiler in the loop so achieving deterministic performance is much more complicated... not to mention caches. The tooling for doing statistical analysis is infinitely better; but just sitting down with a pencil and doing static analysis will always be both simpler and more accurate. For cases where you're writing thousands of lines, I too will generally prefer ARM -- but if you're just writing a couple hundred instructions, assembly is just less to think about. Similarly philosophical is "more capable" -- an RP can handle many more use cases, I agree, but if both handle a given use case, with the same quality, then neither is more capable /for that use case/. And the one that achieves that use case at quality with the simpler implementation is, in my philosophy, preferable. Also, while there are equivalents to the CCL in other processor families, it's by no means universal; and it's not at all rare that the CCL saves one or two external chips.
- chrisjj 1y ago
  > several orders of magnitude more capable I'm looking forward to seeing a LoRa texter that's several orders of magnitude more capable /i

johnsondavies 1y ago

The ATtiny814 is hardly an ancient chip. It's a member of Microchip's TinyAVR 1-Series that was released in 2017 and still being developed, with the 2-Series being released in 2020/2021. Perhaps you're confusing it with the older ATtiny841 (released in 2012), which was an upgrade of the original ATtiny84.

numpad0 1y ago

If people kept buying ATMega328P to control intergalactic subspace modems, that is what gets made and sold. These things run primitive C code at practically infinite speed. That's all that matters.

chrisjj 1y ago

Why not?