25 July 2005
Taking a break
Early indications show 2005 has been a respite for many. By Philip Ling.
You don’t have to look too hard to find statistics that claim only a small fraction of microprocessors end up in a pc – the latest figure is just 2%. But that doesn’t mean the pc market is going away (although developed countries are reaching saturation, there are still a lot of people in the world that don’t have a computer), it just means the market for non PC applications is much greater. The rest are, of course, found in what are generally described as embedded devices. Today, embedded increasingly means connected – but there are a host of applications that aren’t connected and have little need to be.
These applications are targeted by low cost microcontrollers, the kind of applications that, not so long ago, would have featured electromechanical solutions. But the revenue generated per chip by the 2% is vastly greater than the revenue generated per chip by the other 98%. In other words, in order to keep growing the market for embedded processors, their selling price has to keep dropping. Demonstrating the importance of this in February, Zilog announced an 8pin version of its existing 20pin Z8 EncoreXP microcontroller, achieved without sacrificing any peripherals. The smaller device cost around 20% less.
Author
Philip Ling
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.acceleratedtechnology.co.uk
http://www.actel.com
http://www.altera.com
http://www.arc.com
http://www.cypress.com
http://www.latticesemi.com
http://www.mvista.com
http://www.ni.com/uk
http://www.themathworks.com
http://www.xilinx.com
http://www.zilog.com
Companies
Accelerated Technology UK Ltd
Altera UK Ltd
Arc International Ltd
Cypress Semiconductor UK Ltd
Lattice Semiconductor UK Ltd
Microsemi
MontaVista Ltd
National Instruments
The MathWorks Ltd
Xilinx Ltd
Zilog UK
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