NXP announce ARMs down to 8 pins and $0.39

[mikeselectricstuff]

http://www.nxp.com/news/press-releases/2012/11/nxp-revolutionizes-simplicity-with-lpc800.html

[firewalker]

Nice.

Alexander.

[free_electron]

Cortex is the way to go. it's going tokill off most others.

[andersm]

IIRC it took NXP about a year from announcement to actually releasing the commodity-packaged LPC1100 series, and most models still aren't in stock anywhere. Let's hope they're a bit better about getting the product out there this time around, because the chips really do look very interesting.

[TheDirty]

Peripherals are all revamped and it comes with an internal oscillator.  Looks pretty good.  Really, the internal oscillator thing is what makes me use PICs or MSP430's rather than CM3's or CM0's in my day to day hobby designs.  Putting in a crystal is so inconvenient.

[mrflibble]

Ooooh, neat. Preorder *clickie*

[TheDirty]

I guess Microchips patents for multifunction pins has been revoked then.  I can't find anything on the results, but Microchip sued both Zilog and Luminary Micro (Now Texas Intruments) for a patent they have regarding low pin count microcontrollers and pins sharing GPIO and programming/debug functionality.

[nctnico]

Peripherals are all revamped and it comes with an internal oscillator.  Looks pretty good.  Really, the internal oscillator thing is what makes me use PICs or MSP430's rather than CM3's or CM0's in my day to day hobby designs.  Putting in a crystal is so inconvenient.

All Cortex M0 en M3 parts from NXP have a 1% accurate RC oscillator. Works like a charm.

[andersm]

Peripherals are all revamped and it comes with an internal oscillator.  Looks pretty good.  Really, the internal oscillator thing is what makes me use PICs or MSP430's rather than CM3's or CM0's in my day to day hobby designs.  Putting in a crystal is so inconvenient.

All Cortex M0 en M3 parts from NXP have a 1% accurate RC oscillator. Works like a charm.

ST's parts also have internal RC oscillators with similar accuracy. TI's older parts have terrible 30% accurate oscillators, while their newer ones also have 1% accuracy.

[TheDirty]

All Cortex M0 en M3 parts from NXP have a 1% accurate RC oscillator. Works like a charm.

Right.  Don't know what I was thinking of there.  I've used a lpc11xx once without the crystal before for my datalogger.  Not certain why I figured they were needed again.

[brainwash]

That's great news, more cheap powerful options to choose from.

Just my main gripes with these modules for using them in one-off projects:
- no native 5V or 5V tolerant operation
- no ADC, though it has a comparator
- probably no high-power pins, datasheet lists a nominal current of 3-4mA for I/O pins and 100mA absolute limit for the chip

I thought the whole reason of supplying low pin-count DIP packages was to get away with minimal external components while prototyping.

[Bloch]

[size=78%]- no ADC, though it has a comparator[/size]
- probably no high-power pins, datasheet lists a nominal current of 3-4mA for I/O pins and 100mA absolute limit for the chip

I thought the whole reason of supplying low pin-count DIP packages was to get away with minimal external components while prototyping.

Yes if whey did try ? to compete with microchip. Then they will fail completely.


Thank you for the info. No need to waste my time on a new 8 pin brain 

[bxs]

Crazy, no ADC 

And probably will be very limited to direct interface external stuff (Voltage and amount of Current)

This will help, but far from killing 8Bit 

[nctnico]

Just wait until the final datasheets are on NXP's website. They are problably still designing the chips right now. When they announced the Cortex M3 devices the peripherals they promised are different from what ended up in the chips.

I also wonder why they don't use an SO-8 or MSOP-8 package. That would allow for a real tiny footprint.

[alm]

- no native 5V or 5V tolerant operation

According to the (preliminary) datasheet, all of the pins except /RESET and the VDDCMP pin are 5 V tolerant.

[brainwash]

Well, yes, for input pins, but not for supply voltage which has an absolute maximum of 4.6V. Not sure why they went 90% of the way and stopped there.
Even though the pins support 5V input, you can only get something slightly below Vcc output. It's a moot point anyway, the part was designed with 3V3 interfacing in mind and low currents.

[alm]

I've never seen 5 V tolerant VDD pins. It either supports 5 V VDD or not. In the latter case, the inputs may still be designed to handle inputs up to 5 V, hence being 5 V tolerant. Designing protection structures so the pins work properly with 5 V input voltage is quite different from designing the core to work on 5 V, which would require a different (more expensive / lower density) process.

[nctnico]

Well, yes, for input pins, but not for supply voltage which has an absolute maximum of 4.6V. Not sure why they went 90% of the way and stopped there.
Even though the pins support 5V input, you can only get something slightly below Vcc output. It's a moot point anyway, the part was designed with 3V3 interfacing in mind and low currents.

Just forget about 5V. Its a relic from the 70's  O0 Nowadays many larger designs I work on use 1.8V as the primary digital supply voltage. Most mainstream parts will work on 3.3V so its actually easier to use 3.3V than 5V.

[brainwash]

What I'm trying to say is that for a beginner hobbyist market this chip does not make much sense. LM7833 are pretty hard to find. Not sure how many components in breadboard design one would find at 3.3V. Yes, the ADC and comparator and other integrated stuff are not be meant for professional businesses.
For an advanced hobbyist or industrial market this chip is pretty underpowered.
I know about the 1.8V and even 1.2V, but for those parts I have real EE design engineers doing them, putting along real ADCs, adding JTAG and all the other stuff. And then a layer of embedded SW engineers writing firmware for all the stuff. Then a layer of software/system architects writing the framework. Then a final layer of guys writing the actual functionality of the device.
I'm sure that NXP have done their homework and are able to figure out which market they are addressing, but it does not seem to be chipping away at Microchip's share. I do hope that things will change.

[8086]

LM7833 are pretty hard to find.

There's loads of 3.3v regulators available.

Not sure how many components in breadboard design one would find at 3.3V.

Pretty much everything I breadboard now uses 3.3v supply. I haven't used a 5v supply for anything for years.

[Monkeh]

LM7833 are pretty hard to find.

Because an LM317 is hard to develop 3.3V from.

[FenderBender]

Watch out Microchip and Atmel....

[TheDirty]

On another note, but in the ARM cortex area, I finally switched from my FT2232 based JTAG with SWD adapter to this J-Link clone I got off of e-Bay.
http://www.powermcu.com/product-20.html

With a 20pin JTAG to 1.27 10 pin SWD Olimex adapter:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/ARM/JTAG/ARM-JTAG-20-10/

It's working well in SWD mode and it's quick.
I'm using it with Rowley Crossworks, but OpenOCD supports J-Link.

[Mechatrommer]

i really need to push hard my attiny and pic10f stock (50 units each) to market, otherwise i will be doomed.

[T4P]

Freescale's kinetis might sound awesome
I remember recalling unsure who said this but IIRC freescale nearly went bust
And yes, 5V is so 70s ... Use LD1117-3.3 next time

[Mechatrommer]

And yes, 5V is so 70s

you are drunk right?

[mrflibble]

And yes, 5V is so 70s

you are drunk right?

Drunken typo. He probably meant 60s.

Other than that it's quite a few years back now since I last used a 5 Volt part. Most of the breadboards are 3.3 or 3.0 Volt.

[madires]

In my experience, even if you go through all sorts of gyrations to prevent digital noise from getting into your ADC during conversions (like putting the chip to sleep while the ADC is converting), you still are not going to get the performance that you would enjoy from an external ADC.  It depends on what I'm doing of course-- if I'm just reading the position of a potentiometer or something, an on-chip ADC is fine-- but for anything that needs to be seriously accurate, I usually opt for an external ADC.

If feasable (by the project) use oversampling with the internal ADC and the noise even helps. With that method you'll get a resolution about 12 Bits from a 10 Bit ADC, or up to 16 Bits from a fast 12 Bit ADC. Statistics don't lie :-)

[nctnico]

In my experience, even if you go through all sorts of gyrations to prevent digital noise from getting into your ADC during conversions (like putting the chip to sleep while the ADC is converting), you still are not going to get the performance that you would enjoy from an external ADC.  It depends on what I'm doing of course-- if I'm just reading the position of a potentiometer or something, an on-chip ADC is fine-- but for anything that needs to be seriously accurate, I usually opt for an external ADC.

If feasable (by the project) use oversampling with the internal ADC and the noise even helps. With that method you'll get a resolution about 12 Bits from a 10 Bit ADC, or up to 16 Bits from a fast 12 Bit ADC. Statistics don't lie :-)

Indeed statistics don't lie but if you put it to the test then you'll see you won't get more resolution. Getting more resolution depends greatly on the spectrum and quality of the noise. Good noise is something you won't get for free.

[mrflibble]

If feasable (by the project) use oversampling with the internal ADC and the noise even helps. With that method you'll get a resolution about 12 Bits from a 10 Bit ADC, or up to 16 Bits from a fast 12 Bit ADC. Statistics don't lie :-)

Better make sure your noise is nice and gaussian then.

[RCMR]

On another note, but in the ARM cortex area, I finally switched from my FT2232 based JTAG with SWD adapter to this J-Link clone I got off of e-Bay.
http://www.powermcu.com/product-20.html

Woohoo... I just picked up one of those myself -- glad to hear they work okay.

[NiHaoMike]

What I don't understand is how to effectively use an ARM chip with only 6 I/O pins. Maybe stuff like encrypted data logging would need a lot of processing power but little bandwidth. Or connect the SPI to another processor (and maybe a connection to a peripheral) in order to use it as a coprocessor.

If it had a built in ADC and DAC (even 8 or 10 bit ones), it might make a great modem DSP for low speed wireless and PLC applications.

[poptones]

Wouldn't a DSpic, that comes in 8 pin packages and includes a DSP core and A/D and D/A make a better... low end dsp?

That said, I also don't get the point of a low cost chip that has no analog I/o. In fact, I can't understand making a modern 8 pin chip that doesn't have the ability to use ANY of the 5 or 6 usable pins as either analog or digital.

[NiHaoMike]

The dsPIC is only 16 bit (which is still plenty for a simple modem), whereas ARM is 32 bit. What Microchip has to compete with the low end ARMs is the PIC32, which is basically a 32 bit MIPS processor.

[Mechatrommer]

What I don't understand is how to effectively use an ARM chip with only 6 I/O pins.

one eg (4pins IO) i've done. radio remote control. you hook up with radio kit or module and few buttons... 2 or 3 serial lines to radio (depending on the module type) so you got 2 or 1 free pin for button press. there's module also will allow for 1 line only for radio, then you can make 3 buttons each with its own specific data to be sent to radio.

[T4P]

The PIC32 simply cannot win ARM on the processor grunt front, granted they do have a 28pin processor but NXP announced a 28-pin 0.6" DIP chip right? It's the LPC1114

[mikeselectricstuff]

What I don't understand is how to effectively use an ARM chip with only 6 I/O pins.

No different from any other 8-pin chip. In small MCU applications, processor speed is rarely a big issue - it's typically more about peripherals and devtools.
AFAIK two UARTS in an 8-pin package is unique - could be handy for protocol conversion type applications.
I don't understand why they are offering DIP8 but not SO8 though - OK the SSOPs are probably a similar size to a SO8 but for consumer type apps you may not want the pin density.

[Mechatrommer]

What I don't understand is how to effectively use an ARM chip with only 6 I/O pins.

In small MCU applications, processor speed is rarely a big issue

another project i've done pic10f206... 3 pins to read rotary encoder (led + wheel ball mouse type), 1 pin comm to main mcu (if you have more pins for comm is better), and this is certainly speed issue. the encoder is tucked to the 3000rpm. be it tucked to 10Krpm motor, i certainly need more MHz to work on. why i did the project? check out the price for "absolute position" rotary encoder. here one eg... http://www.ebay.com.my/itm/OMRON-Absolute-Rotary-Encoder-E6CP-AG5C-256P-R-E6CPAG5C-new-box-free-ship-/140854534118?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20cb959fe6 thats the cheapest china "buy it now" currently in ebay. you can have better absolute encoder at quadruple the price. and i'm not sure how much rpm they can go to. and go figure how to interface this one... http://www.ebay.com.my/itm/ALLEN-BRADLEY-8-24VDC-GRAY-CODE-ABSOLUTE-ROTARY-ENCODER-845G-F3G8HC1024A-NEW-/271104847790?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f1f1bafae mine was using serial comm... and 1 pin only! because the space constraint i needed to use sot package (6 pins pic10f206).

[SeanB]

Most likely the die does not fit the package yet in one dimension. A few revs and it will shrink to fit inside

[westfw]

What I don't understand is how to effectively use an ARM chip with only 6 I/O pins.

You're not supposed to use it "effectively."  You're supposed to do the same sort of thing you do with the digital-only 8bit chips like a PIC12F509 or an ATtiny13.  Only you (are supposed to) rejoice because you don't have those tiny 1k-instruction limits any more.  The fact that the CPU is vastly overpowered for most of what you can do in 6 pins is supposed to be irrelevant, because the cost is the same as a less powerful CPU anyway.

Three uarts and 6 pins, eh?  That's sorta nice.  "other vendors" have been beaten up for not having any uarts in their small parts.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Three uarts and 6 pins, eh?  That's sorta nice.  "other vendors" have been beaten up for not having any uarts in their small parts.

The 8 pin one has only 2 UARTS. Something I noticed when skimming the data but I've not looked into in detail is that the UARTS share a fractional baudrate divider - I hope this doesn't mean they all have to run at the same rate, but just that only one can have funky division ratios. Also I don't think they have fifos.

[alm]

This would still be an improvement compared to the very limited peripherals available on 8-pin PICs/AVRs. I believe that the PIC10 series also has a quite ancient architecture not well suited for programming in C, this ARM core would allow you to use the same development tools as on the bigger parts.

[NiHaoMike]

one eg (4pins IO) i've done. radio remote control. you hook up with radio kit or module and few buttons... 2 or 3 serial lines to radio (depending on the module type) so you got 2 or 1 free pin for button press. there's module also will allow for 1 line only for radio, then you can make 3 buttons each with its own specific data to be sent to radio.

Why would you want an overkill ARM core when a lower power 8 bit core does the job just fine? (I suppose an ARM core might make sense if you have a highly encrypted rolling code system...)

Maybe having "the world's fastest 8DIP processor" is a good enough reason...

I wonder what the license fees are for the ARM cores. They obviously must be really low for those low end cores if the chip is going to sell for 39c.

[andersm]

Why would you want an overkill ARM core when a lower power 8 bit core does the job just fine?

Why would you insist on an 8-bit core if the ARM MCU does the job equally fine? (As Mike suggested, better tools is a good reason to use ARM.)

[mikeselectricstuff]

Why would you want an overkill ARM core when a lower power 8 bit core does the job just fine?

Why would you insist on an 8-bit core if the ARM MCU does the job equally fine? (As Mike suggested, better tools is a good reason to use ARM.)

Why would you assume 8 bit is lower power ? ARM is probably on a smaller geometry, can typically run at lower voltage and does more per cycle - this may or may not be useful - for bit-twiddling an ARM is little benefit, but any maths greater than 8 bits will be more efficient. Many power-sensitive apps will be sleeping and only drawing power when processing something - a faster processor can go back to sleep more quickly, so any increase in power draw may be compensated for in less time drawing it. 
8-bits will never go away, but more choice is always welcome - there will always be new applications that can make use of it.

[T4P]

I don't know about NXP but Energy Micro's parts have fierce clock gating.

[free_electron]

here's a few pointer as to why they put arm beast in 8 pins package

- lower power design than conventional cores
- smaller geometries. thus more yield per wafer. rerunning the mask for an old design in smaller geometry costs the same price as new technology in smaller geometry. so why keep holding on to the old ?
- arm is very good to run 'c' language. believe it or not butmost 8 bit machines are deplorable when it comes to running 'c'. The design of the languae requires a pile of ram and a register based architecture. not something most 8 bitters have... so the implemetation is crappy and you need all kinds of trickery in the compiler to 'emulate' a register based machine. swap core : problem solved.
- one core scales up from 8 pins to 144 pins and beyond. 1 compiler toolchain. ideal for the codemonkeys

[BravoV]

Maybe someday someone will build a cluster computing from this DIP sized Arm chips by stacking them with so called "Beowulf Shield" just for fun. 

[cloudscapes]

On one hand, it's always nice to see more fast micros, especially in breadboardable DIP!

But on the other hand, I fail to see many uses for an 8-pin micro of this speed. What do you do with 6 free pins? Control relays, preset saving, read some potentiometers, a bit of arithmetic, etc. I don't think 6 free pins isn't going to be a central "brain" of anything that an 8bit avr or pic can't do. Fast micros like PIC32 and ARM shine when you've got all this stuff interfaced to it and have it orchestrating a circuit.

I dunno, I may be wrong.

[T4P]

It's not about the speed though, not that you could use much with massive breadboard inductance 
It's tough to squeeze code into 1KB of space for the cheapest 8pin DIP ATTINY or even worse (512Bytes) for PIC 
And the fact that the chips only have 64Bytes of ram is a bit disconcerting ...
You could simply do much more with 6 pins with 32bit because of the addressable size as well as smaller manufacturing processes NXP can use for ARM 

[poptones]

Actually, thinking about it just a bit more I can see all sorts of advantages.

You really just need a few pins. If it has SCK MOSI and MISO then it can interface to all sorts of stuff that is very specific to your needs. When you have all the pins crowded together in one place it makes board layout more difficult. If you have need for analog interfacing there's all sorts of analog stuff out there, a buck fifty and now you have 4 differential inputs optimized for your function, just have to run your serial lines to the isolated A/D. If you want to run high power lines, run the serial bus to your power driver chip and use whatever layout you need for the rest of it. For discrete controls you can run three wires to digipots for about 60 cents a control.

Actually, I think it's brilliant. Don't jam all the functionality on one part of the board, pay for the functionality you need, and minimize the glue needed to put it all together. Pretty cool.