Understanding PIC pricing

[AndyC_772]

Harsh environment sensors, which are required to have a 0-5V output, and which are bolted straight to something that gets very hot in use.

Supporting components really aren't the problem; parts like R's and C's, crystals, voltage regulators are all readily available with 150C+ temperature ratings, albeit at higher cost than commodity parts.

[Kilrah]

He's talking of completely diffrerent products being cheaper, not of finding cheaper PICs...

[KL27x]

Makes perfect sense, the pricing. Look at offerings from other manufacturers. They drop older stuff to concentrate on the latest and greatest. Which is the most efficient way to do it.

Microchip taps market demand for older devices. Producing smaller amounts of a vast number of products costs more money. The guys that move to newest and best devices should not pay that tax. The guys using the older devices must support that cost. They are the ones that benefit, for w/e reason they are using the older device. For hobbyist and small production, it may be cheaper to continue using older devices for who knows how long? Even in large scale manufacturing, it  might be cheaper to continue using legacy device, particularly where reliability is paramount, and testing and liability could be very expensive. 

If you get a discount on another manufacturer device, it may be because they are planned to go out of production. If you are buying from Microchip, that thing might be around, forever.

[dannyf]

"Makes perfect sense, the pricing."

It is the razor and blades equivalent  in the chip world. Customers using older chips are essentially captured by high software costs, or their lack of reporting the code to newer chips, or product life cycle, etc.

I wonder if someone will take this strategy to the extreme of giving away new chips and charging progressively for them as the chips age.

[dannyf]

"40% cheaper where?"

Stm8 for example.

Also the answer depends on what you meant by spec. For example, avrs can run on 16M or more mips. Many mid range pics run atva quarter of that.

Without laying out a common agreed up set of criteria, it is hard to assert or refute any claims.

[wraper]

He's talking of completely diffrerent products being cheaper, not of finding cheaper PICs...

He is saying comparable or better performance.

I've gotten PICs at far less then what MC advertises on there site for large volume pricing in prototype quantities so the price you see has flexibility.

For example Universal Bee from silicon labs. MCU with USB and CPU which is much faster faster than any of 8 bit PICs (it's not classic 8051 core, just instruction set compatible), 12 bit @ 200ksps /10 bit @ 800ksps ADC and very precise internal oscillator for EUR 0.68 at quantity of 1 http://lv.farnell.com/silicon-labs/efm8ub10f8g-b-qfn20/mcu-8bit-8051-50mhz-qfn-20/dp/2468099
Also contains internal Vreg which can supply up to 100 mA and can power external circuit too. 16KB version is below EUR 1 too. Also they have more compact code than PIC, so less flash actually needed for the same thing.
64KB for EUR 1.39 at single quantity http://lv.farnell.com/silicon-labs/efm8ub20f64g-a-qfn32/mcu-8bit-8051-48mhz-qfn-32/dp/2468104

[luxfx]

then there are the newest of all, the PIC16F18XXX. For example the PIC16F18323 is a 16F1823 with a couple of things more and a lower cost

Awesome information, thank you. I'm pleased to hear my choice of a PIC16F18325 is of the most recent products!

6) Order some free samples.

I'm a hobbyist right now, and from what I can tell free samples caters mostly towards businesses that might be influenced to purchase large quantities. Is there a good way to get some samples as a hobbyist?

If you chose PIC you chose legacy convenience, for any PIC chip on the market will have another processor on the market from another source with a more modern structure with same or better specs 40% cheaper, Pic is a monopoly reign, and is priced  on that way

I've looked a little at EFM8 but was a little surprised at how few of their options came in PDIP, which I'm interested in for testing/breadboarding purposes. (I have done some MSSOP soldering onto adapter boards but would like DIP for learning)  Do you have any other recommendations? I'm mostly focusing on PIC because of the large amount of educational material online and Mac support for the software, and because the PIC16F18325 that I found has dual I²C peripherals that support PMBus in the $1.00 range.

[ebclr]

For hobbyist Ti & analog devices  is the sample king!  It's easier  to get in with a gun on the white house than get a free sample from microchip

[JPortici]

and i have never been refused samples a single time in 6 years! (Academic email, though)
i don't know if i ever ordered some with my personal email.. but now i just add a couple of parts to the week's/mont's order

Anyway, yes. i thought to replace the 16f18323 as the low-pin-count-8bit where i work (three new projects coming) but it's too new a part, the datasheet is incomplete in the electrical caracteristics and we needed to be sure that it had no issues with low power modes (in at least two of them. one is a coin cell transponder so that was critical) and in the last couple of years it happened too frequently that the new parts across all families had many critical bugs in the first release... so i settled for the 1823: a proven, reliable micro (at revision 9!) all the peripherals needed, enough low power and only some cents more than the 323, for now.

[Ian.M]

A good few years back, Microchip clamped down on samples due to scammers ordering them to resell on EBAY (and being dumb enough to sell them with the sample label still on the packaging).   They blacklisted all the common free email providers.  From time to time they add more free providers to the blacklist.

All you need to qualify for free samples is to register at microchip.com or microchipdirect.com with an email address at a domain that doesn't offer free email. This is a separate registration to your Microchip forum logon - there is no problem with using a disposable  email address for their forum.

YMMV as I believe the policy varies from country to country, but AFAIK I have described the requirements for EU and North America

[RogerRowland]

I'm a hobbyist right now, and from what I can tell free samples caters mostly towards businesses that might be influenced to purchase large quantities. Is there a good way to get some samples as a hobbyist?

I'm a hobbyist too, and I've had no problem getting Microchip samples for the last 4-5 years. I'm so impressed with the ease of it, and grateful for the chance to test/prototype different devices that I always order from Microchipdirect when I need more, even if I can get slightly better deals elsewhere. As some of my hobby projects have required 50 to 100 PICs, it's a reasonable expense for a hobby, but I also bought my PICKit3 direct too. I guess they are being paid back for the samples, which in my mind is how it's supposed to work.

[KL27x]

It is totally ok to get free samples from Microchip as a student.

As long as you use a non POP/anon email. (which I suppose could be abused by someone who could turn a profit on sample... like somewhere in a third world country or something).

I have gotten loads. But honestly, I order stuff from electronics distributors so often, what's the point saving a few dollars? Unless it's a part that is unavailable in prototyping quantities, I'll usually just buy it. Delivered in 2 days. Rather than wait up to a week for a free sample from Microchip Direct.

They want students to get free samples. Students are future customers. You also have to answer some questions which gives them meta data on their customer (or prospective customer) base. Which is worth something to them.

[Kilrah]

I have ordered samples many times but that was +10 years ago while I was a student. Some I've used, some I haven't... But I did end up buying a few hundred parts to build into small volume products I've then designed/sold.

I still like their parts, but haven't used them recently mainly because of their policy about development tools. It's gotten better now they harmonized a decent in-house solution with the XC series compilers, but I still think that charging for development tools is ridiculous nowadays, a manufacturer should do everything they can to facilitate and encourage adoption and good and free tools is the main port of call. I much prefer ARM's attitude of integrating support and maintaining GCC for their processor lines.

[wraper]

It's gotten better now they harmonized a decent in-house solution with the XC series compilers, but I still think that charging for development tools is ridiculous nowadays, a manufacturer should do everything they can to facilitate and encourage adoption and good and free tools is the main port of call.

Yes it's ridiculous and other guys do understand it. For example Silicon Labs you gives a full licence of Keil compiler together with Simplicity studio for free. They pay for you to encourage you using their MCUs. They also give free USB VID/PID pairs to encourage using their MCUs with built in USB.

[JPortici]

They also give free USB VID/PID pairs to encourage using their MCUs with built in USB

i believe microchip does that as well, at least i'm sure it did in the past

i can't speak for XC32 but XC16 optimization is already pretty good with "O.1" which you can use with the free version.. for the 8 bitters there isn't much hope at an efficient c code, i almost always resort to ton of inline assembly

[mikeselectricstuff]

They also give free USB VID/PID pairs to encourage using their MCUs with built in USB

i believe microchip does that as well, at least i'm sure it did in the past

i can't speak for XC32 but XC16 optimization is already pretty good with "O.1" which you can use with the free version.. for the 8 bitters there isn't much hope at an efficient c code, i almost always resort to ton of inline assembly

XC16 and 32 are very useable in free mode, it's only the 8 bit version that's badly crippled.

[RogerRowland]

XC16 and 32 are very useable in free mode, it's only the 8 bit version that's badly crippled.

But don't forget that XC32 now obliges you to use Harmony by default and doesn't include the old plib anymore. I've found Harmony to be such a pain to get to grips with that I'm now investigating switching to STM32 ARM instead. Maybe I'll suffer the same pain with ST's Cube stuff, but we'll see .... I guess the only other option is to do away with frameworks altogether but I'm not sure that's realistic if you want to do some quick prototyping.

[mikeselectricstuff]

XC16 and 32 are very useable in free mode, it's only the 8 bit version that's badly crippled.

But don't forget that XC32 now obliges you to use Harmony by default and doesn't include the old plib anymore. I've found Harmony to be such a pain to get to grips with that I'm now investigating switching to STM32 ARM instead. Maybe I'll suffer the same pain with ST's Cube stuff, but we'll see .... I guess the only other option is to do away with frameworks altogether but I'm not sure that's realistic if you want to do some quick prototyping.

Obliges you how ?
I use the latest XC32 without it.

[RogerRowland]

Obliges you how ?
I use the latest XC32 without it.

Well, what I mean is that the legacy peripheral libraries are deprecated and no longer supplied with the latest XC32 compiler. So, unless you do all of the register settings etc. manually, using the datasheets (which I guess is what you do?), then you must either downgrade the compiler to use plib.h or install Harmony and try to climb that learning curve. So, I'm just saying it's a bit of a PITA if you want to knock up something quickly, a bit like you can with 8-bit PICs and the code configurator.

[dannyf]

then you must either downgrade the compiler to use plib.h or install Harmony and try to climb that learning curve.

You shouldn't use such libraries directly. I have a set of my own "libraries" that perform certain functions. Those libraries are identical from chip to chip and often from one family to another family. Those libraries are built on a variety of approaches, direct register access, or different 3rd party libraries or OEM libraries. My user code will never have direct access to any of the lower level libraries and instead only through this middle layer.

With that, when I migrate from one approach to another, or from one library to another, I only need to rewrite the middle layer and i'm done.

Using OEM libraries directly in user code is suicidal in my view.

[RogerRowland]

You shouldn't use such libraries directly. I have a set of my own "libraries" that perform certain functions. Those libraries are identical from chip to chip and often from one family to another family. Those libraries are built on a variety of approaches, direct register access, or different 3rd party libraries or OEM libraries. My user code will never have direct access to any of the lower level libraries and instead only through this middle layer.

With that, when I migrate from one approach to another, or from one library to another, I only need to rewrite the middle layer and i'm done.

Using OEM libraries directly in user code is suicidal in my view.

Yes, I get what you're saying - and if you've already developed your own solution over time, then that's infinitely better. I was talking about prototyping something quickly with a new device. If you're new to PIC32, it's helpful to have a tool that generates working code easily, so that you can just get something running. As you say, one wouldn't choose to rely on that in a real project - burnt too many times on the non-embedded side to make that mistake.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I generally avoid libraries-been  bitten too many times by bugs & other issues in them. For simple functions it's often just as easy to learn the reg settings than the library functions anyway.
Is there anything stopping you using the plib files from older compilers,apart from new device support?

[RogerRowland]

I generally avoid libraries-been  bitten too many times by bugs & other issues in them. For simple functions it's often just as easy to learn the reg settings than the library functions anyway.
Is there anything stopping you using the plib files from older compilers,apart from new device support?

No, it's really an irritation rather than a problem, and maybe I'm half using it as an excuse to explore ARM. After all, they're only just down the road from where I work now and recently in the news, so I'm probably too easily influenced  This is still only a hobby for me, but one that's drawing me slowly but surely closer to the hardware. After nearly 40 years writing software, I enjoy new challenges.

[dannyf]

The same problem exists in the ARM world as well, and it varies from vendor to vendor but generally more severely if your focus is on software across multiple platforms.

I would point to STM, TI and NXP as some of the worst offenders there.

[ebclr]

mbed joins all arm together on same platform, Of course you must be smart enough to make a custom board or be limited only to dozen of platforms from different vendors

https://www.mbed.com/en/