A somewhat unrelated question -- How do they manage to make the chips on the Raspberry pi Zero / Orange Pi / CHIP so cheaply. The Chip + RAM + board + passives are cheaper than a lower spec micro.
Is it only volume ? Anyone have any idea how much the micro on the Raspberry pi Zero costs and how much the RAM costs ?
Are you looking for cheap boards or cheap micros ? What quantity ?
For your scenario chips can be bought much cheaper than boards.
Here is cheapest meating your specs :
$12 for 64kb/512kb - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pcs-STM32F103VET6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-System-Development-Board-Cortex-m3/32346393972.html
Chips are way cheaper
$2.50 for 64kb/64kb - http://www.aliexpress.com/af/STM32F105R8T6.html?ltype=wholesale&d=y&origin=n&isViewCP=y&site=glo&shipCountry=US&SortType=price_asc&SearchText=STM32F105R8T6&isFreeShip=y&isUnitPrice=y&maxQuantity=200&page=1
$2.80 for 384kb/64kb - http://www.aliexpress.com/af/STM32F103RDT6.html?ltype=wholesale&d=y&origin=n&isViewCP=y&site=glo&shipCountry=US&SortType=price_asc&SearchText=STM32F103RDT6&isFreeShip=y&isUnitPrice=y&maxQuantity=200&page=1
A somewhat unrelated question -- How do they manage to make the chips on the Raspberry pi Zero / Orange Pi / CHIP so cheaply. The Chip + RAM + board + passives are cheaper than a lower spec micro.
Is it only volume ? Anyone have any idea how much the micro on the Raspberry pi Zero costs and how much the RAM costs ?
they dont, 20KB ram micros sold at $2 are a TOTAL effin RIPOFF, pee zero is sold ~at a cost.
This is why chinese are making stm32 clones and selling them at 1/5 the price still making good profit.
they dont, 20KB ram micros sold at $2 are a TOTAL effin RIPOFF, pee zero is sold ~at a cost.
This is why chinese are making stm32 clones and selling them at 1/5 the price still making good profit.
Ah - your reply came in as I was typing the above. OK, so perhaps they are clones, but does that apply to most ST micros from China or just the almost ubiquitous (in all sorts of Chinese products) STM8S103F3P6 and the lower end STM32F103 parts?

more expensive than the much more powerful Nucleo STM32F446RET6 (180MHz M4, 512K/128K) at just less than $11 + tax, so $13 here in the UK from RS.
Main problem with the Nucleos, is that it is presumably subsidized and targeted at developers to get them hooked on ST parts.
EVAL KIT TM4C123GXL LAUNCHPAD 32Bits, 80Mhz, 256KB / 32KB / 2KB, around $13.
http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=ek+tm4c123gxl&WT.srch=1&gclid=COrV-K7z18sCFQgxaQodnQEIeg
EVAL KIT TM4C123GXL LAUNCHPAD 32Bits, 80Mhz, 256KB / 32KB / 2KB, around $13.
http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?keywords=ek+tm4c123gxl&WT.srch=1&gclid=COrV-K7z18sCFQgxaQodnQEIegWhat the ... is that a complete board with 2xTM4C123G for about the same price of a single TM4C123G ?
http://www.gigadevice.com/product-category/11.html
you misunderstood me, chinese clone lowest stm32 part
A somewhat unrelated question -- How do they manage to make the chips on the Raspberry pi Zero / Orange Pi / CHIP so cheaply. The Chip + RAM + board + passives are cheaper than a lower spec micro.
Is it only volume ? Anyone have any idea how much the micro on the Raspberry pi Zero costs and how much the RAM costs ?
author=Rasz
just let that sink in, ~16 billion transistors / $9 = ~1.7 billion transistors for a dollar, retail
Cortex-M3 has afair ~100K transistors, another 700K for fattest sram/rom option and we end up at ~1mil transistors. 1000 less than what you get in a ram chip at similar price point.

Whole ram/flash price differentiation is a huge scam, the most expensive part of any ARM microcontroller is packaging
Most lower end stm32 parts are same silicon across whole family, just fused differently. Sometimes they dont even bother and you end up with stm32f103c8t6 (theoretical 64KB flash) having 128KB.