Once again it is dangerous to generalize. I agree that there are lots of products where the very lowest cost solution requires masked programmed parts. But for each of those there are probably ones where cost is a secondary issue. At least not a few greenbacks more.

But I invite you to consider something that is happening in this industry right in front of our eyes.

1) Standard logic parts in designs are falling away at a very rapid pace in favor of higher integration on other parts.

2) Standard MSI/LSI peripheral functions are beginning to be almost non-existent in most embedded designs.

3) Custom designed ICs of any density are becoming almost non-existent in most embeddded designs. These are being replaced with FPGAs which today are on a par with cost of the ICs of yesterday!

4) Embedded processors with on-board reprogrammable flash are appearing in the product selection charts of almost every major microcontroller vendor. Along with that a good share of new work by these vendors is being focused on these FLASH type parts.

Now if you couple the trend of those four observations the fact that the life spans of many products designed today are getting shorter and shorter than products of yesteryear an interesting discovery will occur. I say that in a small number of years that almost all designs will be implemented in microcontroller silicon with on-board FLASH. I will also predict that in the near future it is going to be routine to see these same such controllers with on-board RS232 drivers, RS485 drivers and even CAN Bus drivers.

Michael Karas