Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on March 8, 2013 5:07 am wrote:
> Paul A. Clayton (paaronclayton.delete@this.gmail.com) on March 7, 2013 7:59 pm wrote:
>
> > The packaging and memory capacity issues seem like they would be easy to solve technically,
> > but I could see that targeting high-volume uses (where BGA might be more attractive [guessing,
>
> BGA is not specially attractive for high volume.
> BGA is attractive due to size/space constraints and signal integrity.
> But it's generally more complicated to design and manufacture with.

Thank you for that information.

I sometimes wish that all you folks' knowledge about computer systems was available on the Internet in a well-indexed and searchable format; then you could spend more time making the world a better place and less time reducing the ignorance of one who is unlikely to productively use such knowledge. Unfortunately, such an information source would have contradictions and seeming contradictions that would just confuse me more.

[snip]
> The µC market is vast and has different needs but in general it's
> very high volume and is *extremely* price and power sensitive.
> This leads to the need for vastly different solutions, from dead slow 8
> bit multi-cycle processors to much faster 32 bit pipelined processors.
> There are also vast differences in the set of integrated
> memory, peripherals and interfaces each product has.

With the inherent difference in size and power consumption between 8-bit and 32-bit processors being relatively small (considering memory, interface, peripheral, etc. costs), I would have guessed that 8-bit processors would be marginalized, surviving only from legacy use and better customer relations. I.e., economies of scale would eventually kill 8-bit processors. (From the little I have read, it looks like what is actually happening is that 16-bit processors are being squeezed from below and above rather than displacing 8-bit processors.)

(I can sympathize with an engineering mindset that a 32-bit processor is overkill/wasteful for certain uses--the glass is four times as large as it needs to be--, but I also recognize certain economic arguments in favor of such "waste".)

> Put simply, nobody has made a µC which suits David's needs and happens to have a Cortex-M core.

So you do not think that Cortex-M has a sufficient inherent disadvantage that it could not compete with 8-bit processors--that the absence is effectively a "historical accident"--, correct?