8051 dead or what?

Hi All.
I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a 
really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it 
was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true 
chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG 
CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National 
Semiconductors CD40106.
But thats not the subject of this post ;-)

.....................

I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the 
AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed. 
Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand. 
Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be 
looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have 
programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051 series.
Thank you.
Alistair.

Alistair George wrote:

> Hi All.
> I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made
> a really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and
> it was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried
> and true chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly
> anymore. EG CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the
> original National Semiconductors CD40106.  But thats not the subject
> of this post ;-)
> 
> .....................
> 
> I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the
> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed.
> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand.
> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be
> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I
> have programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the
> 8051 series.  Thank you.  Alistair.

not as far as I know. But that is best gauged by sales of 8051 type
products. The 2051 is nice as a small pinout selfcontained cpu with
limited program space, but for larger applications one would need more
space. Personally I used the DS2252T with 64k prog space and 64k Ram,
lots of room and lots of money too.
rw

-- 

There are still lots of new announcments for the 8051 architecture but
if you want to play if as save as possible you might want to go for
devices like the AT89C51RB2, RC2, RD2 which are also pin compatible
availabile from Philips, called P89C51Rx2. afaik the Atmel devices
support byte programmability because they are build on an EEPROM
process while these Philips devices do not support this feature but if
you do not use the unique features, you will not be tied to one source.


So, RB2/RC2/RD2 could be good options.  The C55 is an Atmel only device
and that is always a little more risky. Nevertheless, the 8051 is far
from dead.

An Schwob

Alistair George wrote:
> Hi All.
> I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a
> really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it
> was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true
> chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG
> CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National
> Semiconductors CD40106.
> But thats not the subject of this post ;-)
>
> .....................
>
> I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the
> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed.
> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand.
> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be
> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have
> programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051 series.
> Thank you.
> Alistair.

Alistair George wrote:
> Hi All.
> I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a 
> really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it 
> was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true 
> chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG 
> CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National 
> Semiconductors CD40106.

We use the HEF40106BT, and that works very well, over a long time frame.

> But thats not the subject of this post ;-)
> 
> .....................
> 
> I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the 
> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed. 
> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand. 

  Most users here in NZ, have morphed their AT89C55WD designs to the
AT89C51ED2. (or RD2 )

  There is also the AT89S8253.

  For new AT89C2051 designs, you should look at the AT89LP4052
( also in stock in NZ )

  If you need ADC, the SiLabs C8051F41x is a good choice for new designs 
: 50MIPS and 12 bit adc/dac, and 5V operation, with on chip debug.

> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be 
> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have 
> programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051 series.

We keep a variant supplier listing here :
http://www.designtools.co.nz/overview.htm

and you can see, the 8051 is a very long way from dead.

What has happened, is that the lead-free transition, has caused some 
stocking rationalise

-jg

Jim Granville wrote:
snip>
Hi Jim,
Just checked on price of AT89C51ED2 and it seems quite a bit more than 
the AT89C51WD; but that was R/Spares price.

Re HEF40106BT been there, tried that does not work in our use, which as 
a very high gain oscillator.

Good to see you still keeping on.
Cheers for info,
Alistair.

Alistair George wrote:
I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the
> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed.
> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand.
> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be
> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have
> programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051 series.
> Thank you.
> Alistair.

I don't think so, the Silabs C8051FX series beats the so called modern
ultra low power MSP430's/AVR's/PIC's, in speed,  analog I/O
performance, small size and power consumption, specifically

1) 12 bit A/D with programmable gain amplifier with actual signal to
noise performance specification (try to even find this info with the
MSP430's or Atmels, I suppose its so bad they don't want to post it, at
least AVR has a noise reduction mode where they shut off the CPU for
conversions, see this months Circuit Cellar for an example of the crazy
A/D performance of the AVR's with the CPU running)
2)On some models, a true 16x16 bit MAC with 40 bit accumulator, the
MSP430 is the only one that comes close, it has a sort of MAC, doesn't
work with signed numbers (???) has a 32 bit accumulator, nice try I
guess
3) A mult and divide instruction, even in the smallest 3mm x 3mm
packages, none of the others have a divide (except the PIC24) and only
the higher end MSP430's/AVR models have a multiply (why exactly do the
modern guys believe you don't need a divide instruction? or why is a
multiply an option only available on the big chips).
4) Power, how about 300 uA at 1Mhz, 9.5ma at 50 Mhz,  <100nA  shutdown,
 800 nA clock running, oh, and the C8051Fx's  can ramp up to 100Mhz,
the MSP430, they have lower power consumption, but not by much, there
high end is 8 Mhz, and a whopping 16Mhz for the new ones, AVR's up to
20Mhz
5) Packages down to 3mm x 3mm, USB evaluation tools for $10

Yea the 8051 is a clunky architecture, but do your high level stuff in
C and high speed stuff in asm and it is manageable, the end users don't
care.

If you don't need low power, however, I would recommend the 32 bit
ARM's, they can be quite a bit thirsty at low speeds but are pretty
good up at around 20-40Mhz.

Alistair George wrote:

> 
> Re HEF40106BT been there, tried that does not work in our use, which as
> a very high gain oscillator.
> 

You are using a hex schmitt trigger as a high gain oscillator?

Ian

What about a soft core 8051 written in VHDL or Verilog? Reusable in an FPGA
for a long time to come. :-)

"Alistair George" <noname@xtra.co.nz> skrev i meddelandet
news:449c5480@news.orcon.net.nz...
> Hi All.
> I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a
> really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it
> was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true
> chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG
> CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National
> Semiconductors CD40106.
> But thats not the subject of this post ;-)
>
> .....................
>
> I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the
> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed.
> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand.
> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be
> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have
> programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051
series.
> Thank you.
> Alistair.

In article <449d6daa$0$15791$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, Bubb
<bubb@telia.se> writes
>What about a soft core 8051 written in VHDL or Verilog? Reusable in an FPGA
>for a long time to come. :-)

Lets face it the 8051 will carry on for a long while yet.  There are
VERY many producers of 8051 parts and cores, never mind a second source
you have multiple. The 8051 core is low cost if you want to put it in an
FPGA to create your own.

There are many high quality tools and a lot of experience for the 8051
out there.  The packages range from 8 pin SMT to 150+ pins though I
think the 40 pin DILs are hard to find now...  Even radiation hardened
versions. 

I am sure that the 600 odd variants will shrink down to only a few
hundred over time but I can't see it dying out for a few years yet.  I
think it is the most popular MCU on the planet including x86. AFAIK most
PC's have one or two  51's in them somewhere. Used to be keyboard and
mouse. 
 

>"Alistair George" <noname@xtra.co.nz> skrev i meddelandet
>news:449c5480@news.orcon.net.nz...
>> Hi All.
>> I used Atmel 8051 derivatives in all my earlier projects. Atmel made a
>> really nice chip in the AT89C55 then later they changed the die and it
>> was not as good; chip 'engineers' come along and change a tried and true
>> chip and its specs change and then it does not work properly anymore. EG
>> CD40106/74C14 performs totally differently than the original National
>> Semiconductors CD40106.
>> But thats not the subject of this post ;-)
>>
>> .....................
>>
>> I have noticed that in my latest suppliers linecard that only the
>> AT89c2051 is being sold and it seems the 'old' 8051 is a dying breed.
>> Even to source the AT89C55WD is a special order here in New Zealand.
>> Does this mean the 8051/2 series is considered defunct? Should I be
>> looking at alternatives for my next product? If so, its a pain as I have
>> programmer, emulator and software to achieve my goals with the 8051
>series.
>> Thank you.
>> Alistair.
>
>

-- 
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Chris Hills wrote:
<snip>  I
> think it is the most popular MCU on the planet including x86. AFAIK most
> PC's have one or two  51's in them somewhere. Used to be keyboard and
> mouse. 

  Yes, SST have an interesting new device, targets PCs, that has the
4MBit BOOT FLASH, and the FLASH C51 IO controller, all for $3.50@10K

[also usefull for Loggers, or just lots of IO ]

http://www.sst.com/news/?id=320

another notable announcement is ASIX's 10/100 Ethernet, with inbuilt PHY
and TCP/IP, and a 100MHz C51 core, and up to 512KF/32KR.
I have not seen price indicators on this one yet.

http://www.asix.com.tw/products.php?op=pItemdetail&PItemID=91;72;103

-jg