Microchip Technology Introduces New Family of 40MHz 3V PIC18F Flash Microcontrollers

Pentiums don't cost $3 and run from coin cells, generally.

-Andrew

"Steve Calfee" <stevexcalfee@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1a5r611hh19st5u9mbipg4jph7ekhooe4a@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:36:20 -0400, "Bill Giovino"
> <editor@nospam-microcontroller.com> wrote:
>
>>Microchip Technology Inc. today announced the first ten members of its
>>high-pin count, high-density memory PIC18F87J10 Flash microcontroller
>>family, which double the performance in low-voltage applications by
>>delivering up to 10 MIPS at 3V.
>>
>>http://microcontroller.com/news/microchip_pic18_40mhz.asp
>>
>>A PIC18F product roadmap is included with this article.
>>
>>-Bill Giovino
>> Executive Editor
>> http://Microcontroller.com
>>
>>
> The real question is why is it so poor? It runs at 3v, but must be
> really old technology. The Ubicom ip2k is a super PIC, has been out
> since 2000, runs at 3.3 or 2.5 volts, is 5 volt tolerant and runs at
> 160 MHZ and MIP. I would expect a price premium for speed, but the
> ip2k is not that expensive.
>
> Intel p4 processors run at close to 4 GHZ, why do you lag so much? 2
> orders of magnitude? Could someone explain while single chip micros
> are so far behind the state of the art? The fastest 8051 and Pics are
> way to slow for this time in the industry.
>
> If you guys cannot build your own fast PICs why not just buy Ubicom?
> There is no "x" in my email address. 

> The real question is why is it so poor? It runs at 3v, but must be
> really old technology. The Ubicom ip2k is a super PIC, has been out
> since 2000, runs at 3.3 or 2.5 volts, is 5 volt tolerant and runs at
> 160 MHZ and MIP. I would expect a price premium for speed, but the
> ip2k is not that expensive.
> 
> Intel p4 processors run at close to 4 GHZ, why do you lag so much? 2
> orders of magnitude? Could someone explain while single chip micros
> are so far behind the state of the art? The fastest 8051 and Pics are
> way to slow for this time in the industry.

A large factor is memory speed. Flash is slow. 40MHz is quite fast for
Flash. If you want to go faster than that, then you have to start
implementing caching. You're then dealing with a different type of
CPU.

Cheers,
Jon

"Jon Beniston" <jon@beniston.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:e87b9ce8.0504260301.6272d233@posting.google.com...
> > The real question is why is it so poor? It runs at 3v, but must be
> > really old technology. The Ubicom ip2k is a super PIC, has been out
> > since 2000, runs at 3.3 or 2.5 volts, is 5 volt tolerant and runs at
> > 160 MHZ and MIP. I would expect a price premium for speed, but the
> > ip2k is not that expensive.
> >
> > Intel p4 processors run at close to 4 GHZ, why do you lag so much? 2
> > orders of magnitude? Could someone explain while single chip micros
> > are so far behind the state of the art? The fastest 8051 and Pics are
> > way to slow for this time in the industry.
>
> A large factor is memory speed. Flash is slow. 40MHz is quite fast for
> Flash. If you want to go faster than that, then you have to start
> implementing caching. You're then dealing with a different type of
> CPU.
>
> Cheers,
> Jon

To my knowledge the pics run at an instruction rate of 10Mhz (@40MHz clock).
So the Flash only operates at 10Mhz.

MIKE

I believe the 30 Mhz dspics use an internal pll to up the internal
frequency to 120Mhz (to run at 30Mhz instruction rate), so the flash is
operating at 30MHz.

On Tuesday, in article
     <426e104f$0$3771$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>
     noone@home "Andrew M" wrote:
>"Steve Calfee" <stevexcalfee@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:1a5r611hh19st5u9mbipg4jph7ekhooe4a@4ax.com...
>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:36:20 -0400, "Bill Giovino"
>> <editor@nospam-microcontroller.com> wrote:
>>>Microchip Technology Inc. today announced the first ten members of its
>>>high-pin count, high-density memory PIC18F87J10 Flash microcontroller
>>>family, which double the performance in low-voltage applications by
>>>delivering up to 10 MIPS at 3V.
>>>
>>>http://microcontroller.com/news/microchip_pic18_40mhz.asp

>> The real question is why is it so poor? It runs at 3v, but must be
>> really old technology. The Ubicom ip2k is a super PIC, has been out
>> since 2000, runs at 3.3 or 2.5 volts, is 5 volt tolerant and runs at
>> 160 MHZ and MIP. I would expect a price premium for speed, but the
>> ip2k is not that expensive.
>>
>> Intel p4 processors run at close to 4 GHZ, why do you lag so much? 2
>> orders of magnitude? Could someone explain while single chip micros
>> are so far behind the state of the art? The fastest 8051 and Pics are
>> way to slow for this time in the industry.
>>
>> If you guys cannot build your own fast PICs why not just buy Ubicom?
>> There is no "x" in my email address. 
>
>Pentiums don't cost $3 and run from coin cells, generally.

Alternatively who needs a pentium (or similar) with all its power
consumption/dissipation and ancillary circuit to do things like
heating control, when it would become the main heating element!

-- 
Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/>    PC Services
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/>              GNU H8 & mailing list info
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/>             For those web sites you hate

"M.Randelzhofer" <techseller@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:3d754dF6souraU1@individual.net...
:
> To my knowledge the pics run at an instruction rate of 10Mhz (@40MHz
clock).
> So the Flash only operates at 10Mhz.

I've added this paragraph to the article to clarify this point:

All PIC18 microcontrollers execute one instruction every machine cycle. A
machine cycle is 4 clock cycles.  This gives 10 MIPS performance @40 MHz and
translates into 10 MHz access  to either internal or external Flash memory.
With the internal 4 x PLL circuit, an external 10 MHz crystal can be used
to obtain an internal 40 MHz clock.

http://microcontroller.com/news/microchip_pic18_40mhz.asp

-Bill Giovino
 Executive Editor
 http://Microcontroller.com

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:55:22 +0100 (BST), paul$@pcserv.demon.co.uk
(Paul Carpenter) wrote:

>>Pentiums don't cost $3 and run from coin cells, generally.
>
>Alternatively who needs a pentium (or similar) with all its power
>consumption/dissipation and ancillary circuit to do things like
>heating control, when it would become the main heating element!

Who needs a heater element and a heater controller, when you can vary
the processor sleep times :-). The Pentiums even have some over-
temperature protection.

Paul

"Jon Beniston" <jon@beniston.com> wrote in message 
news:e87b9ce8.0504260301.6272d233@posting.google.com...
>> The real question is why is it so poor? It runs at 3v, but must be
>> really old technology. The Ubicom ip2k is a super PIC, has been out
>> since 2000, runs at 3.3 or 2.5 volts, is 5 volt tolerant and runs at
>> 160 MHZ and MIP. I would expect a price premium for speed, but the
>> ip2k is not that expensive.
>>
>> Intel p4 processors run at close to 4 GHZ, why do you lag so much? 2
>> orders of magnitude? Could someone explain while single chip micros
>> are so far behind the state of the art? The fastest 8051 and Pics are
>> way to slow for this time in the industry.
>
> A large factor is memory speed. Flash is slow. 40MHz is quite fast for
> Flash. If you want to go faster than that, then you have to start
> implementing caching. You're then dealing with a different type of
> CPU.

The new dsPICS I'm using operate at up to 30 MIPS with a 120 MHz clock, 
using a PLL. A range of 16-bit PICS will be coming out, using the same 
technology. The dsPICs do use a lot of power, though - over 100 mA at 
maximum speed. Apart from that, they are nice chips.

Leon
-- 
Leon Heller, G1HSM
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller 

Steve Calfee <stevexcalfee@hotmail.com> writes:

> My question is why are the single chippers (which should have big
> advantages in memory access and EMI), soo slow?

Because speed isn't always the most important factor.  Speed is also
not an independent variable that can change without affecting other
things.  It's hard to speed something up without also increasing
power consumption or noise.

-- 
Darin Johnson
    Caution! Under no circumstances confuse the mesh with the
    interleave operator, except under confusing circumstances!