Comment by crote
8 hours ago
It isn't 1970 anymore. You can get 32-bit ARM MCUs with tens of kilobytes of flash and multiple kilobytes of RAM for less than 10 cents.
We've long since reached a point where chips are cheap enough to be disposable. They are included in paper transit tickets and price tags. There is basically no market left where your volume is small enough that custom application-specific ICs aren't an option, but your volume is large enough that the cost of a few additional kilobytes of memory isn't massively outweighed by the developer time saved.
Want several megabytes of RAM and flash to run Java? That's the price of a cup of coffee!
> It isn't 1970 anymore. You can get 32-bit ARM MCUs with tens of kilobytes of flash and multiple kilobytes of RAM for less than 10 cents.
Do they run at single-digit nA current draw?
You always could find deep niche where any high-level technology is not suitable.
I don't think you will program such device in C, rather in assembly, right? When you have like memory for 500 commands, it is easier to go directly to assembler, anyway, with such hardware as a target you don't need portability, this code is 100% hardware-dependable, at it is perfectly Ok.
BTW, which uC your have in mind when you talk about single-digit nA draw (in running state? in deep sleep?), because old 8-bit architectures typically are designed for older node processes and not as energy effective as new one, and draw in sleep doesn't depend much on RAM or FLASH size or architecture, it is more design philosophy.
Anyway, PIC16LF (20nA in deep sleep) or 8051 clone (50nA in deep sleep) or STM8 (~0.30 uA in halt) or ATtinys (100nA in deep sleep), which are covered by "768 bytes of flash and 64 bytes of RAM" description are comparable with EFM32 ARM32-M0+ (20nA in deep sleep), same with uA/Mhz, but ARM32-M0+ will do much more work for each Mhz, so it will be more efficient in the end (faster does all work and go to sleep again).