When will the 8051 and othe 8-bits go away?

"Paul Keinanen" <keinanen@sci.fi> wrote in message
news:rv6oc11m4jhdunm2icppbsluonooqoaud6@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 16:17:08 GMT, "steven" <stevenPANTSvh@pandora.be>
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> To get really low system power consumption, the 32 kHz crystal
> frequency should first be divided with a trivial frequency divider
> chain to a lower value and then run the entire uC core at that
> frequency (at say 1024 or even 64 Hz).  There will be a very limited
> number of instructions that can be executed at such clock rates, but a
> simple stopwatch application should not need too many instructions.
>

Every gate will consume power, so you want as few of them as possible. Also,
in the 70s feature size was enormous to what we can get nowadays, so more
gates were more expensive. (today cost is often determined by pin count).
I don't think you could build a microcontroller with fewer transistors than
a loop counter solution. Just think of what you'd need: ALU, ROM, memory
interface, address generator (think branches)...

In my experience it like this- people learn a micro at collage or where
ever. They know this micro and that makes it easy for them to use. They
use it in every application, regardless of whether it is suitable or
not.
I you want to see this in action ask some one what their favorite micro
is and tell them it is crap. They immediately launch into a full on
emotional assault on you.
I have worked in Asia and have seen the 8088/8051 used in almost
everything. The most amazing one is in a controller application such as
a telephone system or PABX, it is clearly not suited to this.
 But for the above reason they continue to use it.
  The development platform is also cheap.
 Smart micro houses provide cheap development kits and software.

Grant Edwards wrote:
> 8-bit parts are always going to be cheaper and lower power than
> 32-bit parts.  4-bit parts are always going to be cheaper than
> 8-bit parts.

Guy Macon <_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> writes:
> Not really.  We have reached the point where the die size 
> is the same, because the bonding pads dominate.

Depends on the process.  To make inexpensive chips, you have to use an
old process, not the latest.  In other words, in early 2005 inexpensive
chips are made in 0.5 micron or larger, not 130 nm or 90 mn.  There are
several reasons for this:

   1)  Mask costs for smaller processes are *much* higher.  This isn't
       likely to change much in the future, so 180 nm and smaller mask
       sets are likely to always be very expensive (hundreds of thousands
       of dollars).  Even though you can amortize the mask cost over a very
       large number of units, it still ends up contributing a significant
       amount to the per-chip cost.

   2)  Wafer starts in older processes are cheaper.  This does shift over
       time, so when 65 nm becomes common, 180 nm will probably be a lot
       cheaper than it is today.

In a 0.5 micron process, you're a lot less likely to be pad limited,
so 4-bit and 8-bit processors with similar amounts of memory and the
same pin count are likely to have different die sizes.

      

Guy Macon <_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> writes:
> My predictions:
>  32-bits will be here forever.  Great size for demanding embedded apps.
>  64-bits will not exist by the year 2040.
> 128-bits will not exist by the year 2060.
> 256-bits will become the top-end.

If you're referring to the size of the integer registers, I don't see
much justification for 128-bit and 256-bit processors.  I think the changes
to high-end processor architecture between now and 2060 are much more likely
to increase parallelism (in various forms) rather than simply make
registers and ALUs wider.

For floating point, 128-bit registers are probably reasonable, but 256-bit
is questionable.  Some current 64-bit processors have 128-bit floating
point registers.

Certainly the use of 128-bit and 256-bit hardware data busses is worthwhile
for high-end systems, and that's already done today on 32-bit and
64-bit processors.

Don McKenzie <look@mysig.com> writes:
> It seems like only yesterday when Bill Gates said: "Who would ever
> want more than 640K?"

Actually, it seems like never, since he didn't say that.

On Mon, 04 Jul 2005 18:57:43 GMT, Ben Bradley
<ben_nospam_bradley@frontiernet.net> wrote:

>   What bugs me about this article (and even this thread) is the lack
>of mention of DSP's - 16-bit fixed-point DSP's thesedays just happen
>to be microcontrollers with DSP CPU cores. They're probably not the
>majority of the 16-bit market, but I wonder what the percentage is.

   I just thought of a LARGE volume embedded DSP market: Cell phones
(there's also mp3 players such as the ipod, but that's minor compared
to cellphones). Do any of them use some other microcontroller in
addition to the DSP (perhaps for a very low power mode, though the
DSP's I've seen can operate over quite a range of MIPS and currents)?

-----
http://www.mindspring.com/~benbradley

Guy Macon wrote:
> Less than 5% of the market compared to 8-bits having 30-40%.
> http://www.techonline.com/community/ed_resource/feature_article/36930
> 
<snip>
It's interesting to compare those numbers with these just quoted by
Philips.

http://www.eeproductcenter.com/micro/opinion/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165700460

This has the 8 & 16 bit shares pretty much reversed (& more credible)
than the figures above !?

These inlude forecasts for 2009, and clearly, 8 bits is not going away,
but neither is the 16 bit sector going to collapse.
These figures are also by revenue; do them by volume, and the 8 bit
will continue to be way out in front.

-jg

Eric Smith wrote:
> Don McKenzie <look@mysig.com> writes:
> 
>>It seems like only yesterday when Bill Gates said: "Who would ever
>>want more than 640K?"
> 
> 
> Actually, it seems like never, since he didn't say that.

You generally cannot prove a negative statement.

kerlin88@yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> In my experience it like this- people learn a micro at collage or
> where ever. They know this micro and that makes it easy for them
> to use. They use it in every application, regardless of whether
> it is suitable or not.
>
> I you want to see this in action ask some one what their favorite
> micro is and tell them it is crap. They immediately launch into a
> full on emotional assault on you.
>
> I have worked in Asia and have seen the 8088/8051 used in almost
> everything. The most amazing one is in a controller application
> such as a telephone system or PABX, it is clearly not suited to
> this.  But for the above reason they continue to use it.

About 1972 I built a PABX around the 8008.  I would have killed for
the 8088 or 8051.  When I left due to a disagreement with the
President the 8080 was about to come out, and I was planning a
system using two of them.  It would have been more than adequate. 
One was to handle communications, and the other was the executive. 
And that was a full featured PABX, with all the frills, such as
call waiting, forwarding, busy waiting, whatnot.

Please include adequate context in your posts.  Look around for
information on how to handle the insipid google usenet interface.

-- 
"When I want to make a man look like an idiot, I quote him."
                                               -- Mark Twain

Eric Smith wrote:
> Don McKenzie <look@mysig.com> writes:
> 
>>It seems like only yesterday when Bill Gates said: "Who would ever
>>want more than 640K?"
> 
> 
> Actually, it seems like never, since he didn't say that.

Are you quibbling over the exact wording? Because he did say, many years 
ago, something about 640K being enough for anybody.

Bill