??? 02/21/11 15:22 Read: times |
#181216 - yes Responding to: ???'s previous message |
It is bad when the choices of really low pin-count processor gets limited.
The cost of low-end ARM chips is low, so they have a huge overlap with the high-end 8051 chips. But the world also needs tiny processors, maybe just functioning as I2C converters or controlling a few LED + buttons or expanding a circuit with an additional SPI-controlled UART other truly trivial tasks. But I do understand NXP. It is no fun to sell the smallest chips. 30% margin on an almost zero price means they still get hardly any profit unless each order is for millions of chips. The really, really low-end chips must be sold at so low prices that they reach the level of slightly more expensive passive components. It would really be good if there was a larger availability of 8 to 28-pin processors as glue or for toy applications. |