TI MSP430
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From: Gary Reichlinger on 8 Apr 2006 22:46 On 8 Apr 2006 17:55:22 -0700, "larwe" <zwsdotcom(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Right. But these are distribution prices. They don't reflect the direct >pricing at all. Clearly TI's prices to distris are closer to the >break-even edge than Atmel's, so neither TI nor the distri have much >room to discount deeply on quantity. The fact that TI is willing to make their microcontrollers available at reasonable prices in small volumes indicates their interest in dealing with small companies. This ties in with the low cost development tools and free seminars. While this policy may not seem important to large companies, it is reason to take notice by those of us in the low-volume high value-added segment.
From: larwe on 8 Apr 2006 22:52 Gary Reichlinger wrote: > The fact that TI is willing to make their microcontrollers > available at reasonable prices in small volumes indicates their > interest in dealing with small companies. This ties in with the low It's more or less an established fact that Atmel is not very interested in doing business with small accounts. Samples, support, low prices are just unavailable for anyone smaller than <$x>. I threw the price fact into the mix because some of us moonlight at day jobs where we work on high-volume consumer junk. Of course our real lives in our home labs are not the same, but it's always good to have more data points.
From: Jim Granville on 8 Apr 2006 23:18 larwe wrote: <paste> > The MSP430 prices are annoying, though. AVRs come down to > as little as 1/4th the price of an equivalent TI part. > Jim Granville wrote: > >>That can happen, where one supplier is able to get better >>"column movement" than another. >>Plus lead free 'stock clearing' can also affect prices... > > > We buy direct in both cases, and we only spec in RoHS-compliant parts. .... then it might be prudent to not mention that Atmel's price is 1/4 that of an equivalent part. Someone is likely to get their wrist slapped, and your price might vaporise... :) IME uC normally follow a 'fairly well behaved' price curve, and where they diverge greatly, be wary of the sustainability of that price.... -jg
From: Gary Reichlinger on 8 Apr 2006 23:32 On 8 Apr 2006 17:43:20 -0700, "larwe" <zwsdotcom(a)gmail.com> wrote: >"Now, it's an obscure but well-recognized ritual amongst engineers and >computer scientists to gauge the architecture of any new device on the >basis of its similarity to the PDP-11(1). Do you guys belong to AARP?
From: Mark Borgerson on 9 Apr 2006 01:45
In article <1144537383.517473.281170(a)g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, zwsdotcom(a)gmail.com says... > > Mark Borgerson wrote: > > > That quantity factor makes a big difference. My customer had no > > problem with a waaaaay over-specified MSP430F149 as a combo RTC > > and I/O controller at quantities of a hundred per year. For that > > You didn't provide the punchline - did he look at AVR and compare > prices at all? At the time I was coming from the 68K world, and the MSP430 architecture appealed to me. I was also using it as a RTC running off a 40KHz xtal when the rest of the instrument was asleep. One spec was that the system had to draw less than 100uA in sleep mode. That meant paying very careful attention to the power supply and finding an RTC/IO controller that would run on very low current. I also made good use of the MSP430 12-bit ADC for some auxilliary sensors that were not connected to the 16-Bit ADC. > > MSP430 is a truly elegant architecture, there's no denying it. von > Neumann simplicity, totally transparent handling of registers and > addressing modes; I really can't find much to fault with it (except > maybe the way info memory is handled). But: > > > software and sensor circuitry. A few dollars here and there > > to make the engineers comfortable is no problem when you're > > How much "comfort" did the F149 earn you, out of interest? I've worked > a lot with AVR in my real life, and MSP430 mostly at work. While AVR is > not internally as tidy as MSP430, it's really not bad (especially > compared with a horror story like the PICmicro). And both parts are > quite C-friendly, if this tickles your pickle. Been there and done that with the PICs. Never again. (I'm both busy enough and close enough to retirement that I would turn down jobs where using a PIC was part of the requirement.) I don't think I ever used more than 1/4 the code space of the MSP430F149. I did use a lot of the RAM, though. The MSP is the interface to a data flash chip which sent and received data in 1056-byte blocks. It was much easier to have the full block buffered on the MSP and sent to the ARM as required. A chip with less than 2K RAM would have required a more complex approach. > > > a different approach to component selection. I think I'll stay > > in the low-volume, high value-added arena where I don't have to > > count the bytes and pennies quite so carefully! ;-) > > The dollars add up pretty quickly. I can't even make a decision that's > worth less than $250K these days. (These numbers are frightening, by > the way). I don't think I've ever worked on an oceanographic project that sold more than 2000 units. The oceanographic instrument market just isn't that large. However, it is the right market for a self-taught embedded systems developer with an MS in chemical oceanography. I've tried Apple II peripherals and software and Macintosh software (back in the 80's----grey beard is itching like mad now!!!) but wasn't nearly as happy in that field. Mark Borgerson |