| ??? 06/01/06 17:31 Read: times Msg Score: +1 +1 Informative |
#117547 - Some hype there Responding to: ???'s previous message |
The information is, of course, interesting. But the author either hyped the situation or was uninformed when he wrote:
Current users of the 8051, 251, 8096/196, 188/186, i960, 386 and 486 are basically out of luck. Orders won’t be accepted after March, 2007. Pin for pin second sources mostly don’t exist, though AMD continues to make variants of the 186, and lots of companies produce various flavors of the 8051. Say what? The Intel line of 8051-compatible MCUs is about the most no-frills, bottom-of-the-line products you can find. If he means that you can't find another pin-for-pin second source with such a minimal set of features, he's probably right. But there are plenty (I'm not sure whether to say dozens or hundreds) of pin-for-pin second sources if you are willing to tolerate a larger feature set. I've actually only used an Intel '51 once, and that was because it was part of an existing product that I had to work with. I've never designed system from scratch using an Intel '51 part. They just didn't come close to what was offered by other vendors. Their '51 line of products pretty much got stuck in the 80's. While that was a great decade, I'm not sure I want my technology stuck there. The article also notes that Intel is abandoning more than 700 parts and pretty much just going exclusively Pentium. This isn't a specific and isolated abandonment of the '51 architecture but rather a clear move on Intel's part to get out of the high-volume, small embedded system industry. Regards, Craig Steiner |
