24 March 2009
Hand holding: the new technology
Despite all the razzamatazz surrounding 32bit microcontrollers, most applications are still served by 8 and 16bit devices. And there's good reason for this; 8 and 16bit parts have always provided pretty much the right balance of power and peripherals for the job at hand.
Nevertheless, companies such as NXP are looking to entice designers to move their applications to a 32bit platform.
Cost is one of the main drivers for 8 and 16bit applications, so it goes without saying that if you want someone to move to 32bit processing, you have to offer those devices at 8bit prices. Similarly, 8bit users don't want to get involved in the process of rewriting code and so on, which requires portability.
NXP believes it has met these needs with the announcement of the LPC1100, a 32bit microcontroller designed around ARM's Cortex-M0 core. But you won't be able to get your hands on one of these, assuming you want to, until the beginning of 2010. Why the long lead time? The answer is that NXP is getting the support side organised. NXP's Geoff Lees says the next few months will see 'a lot of activity' with application code writers, plus those developing low level drivers, middleware, demo boards and downloadable code in order to get the support infrastructure in place. NXP is also sorting the manufacturing issues, to make sure the wrinkles – should there be any – are ironed out before volume production.
Why? Lees knows full well the microcontroller market is fiercely competitive and that anyone thinking of moving to 32bit is going to need what he sees as 'more support than normal'. "Customers won't want any difficulties," he observed, "because they have existing suppliers."
And there's the crux of the issue. Gone are the days when engineers could explore different microcontroller architectures on an intellectual basis. NXP, or any similar company, won't win these designs unless they make the process of moving from one microcontroller to another as easy as possible – even if their technology is demonstrably better.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.nxp.com
Companies
NXP Semiconductors
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