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0 pointsrvense5y ago0 comments

These are all basically ten-year-old parts, aren't they?

0 comments

Yes but hey, the core ARM ISA is like 40 years old. The key is that they are in fact "low cost SoCs" which is not something I knew existed :-).

Its really too bad the dev boards are so expensive but I get you need a lot of layers to route that sort of BGA.

rvenseOP5y ago

Sure, the ARM ISA is old, but a few things have happened in microarchitecture since then. I wouldn't be rushing to use a 10-year-old ARM over a newer one. The Cortex cores are pretty great compared to ARM9 or whatever.

dragontamer5y ago

The ARM Cortex-M3 was released in 2006 and is still a popular microcontroller core. Microcontrollers have a multi-decade long lifespan. (I'm still seeing new 8051-based designs...)

There are still new chips using the Cortex-M3 today. Microcontroller devs do NOT want to be changing their code that often.

New chips move the core to lower-and-cheaper process nodes (and lower the power consumption), while otherwise retaining the same overall specifications and compatibility.

dragontamer5y ago

They're all low end embedded parts with highly integrated peripherals. Basically: a microcontroller.

No different than say, Cortex-M0 or M0+ in many regards (although ARM scales down to lower spec'd pieces).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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ChuckMcM5y ago

Yes but hey, the core ARM ISA is like 40 years old. The key is that they are in fact "low cost SoCs" which is not something I knew existed :-).

Its really too bad the dev boards are so expensive but I get you need a lot of layers to route that sort of BGA.

rvenseOP5y ago

dragontamer5y ago

The ARM Cortex-M3 was released in 2006 and is still a popular microcontroller core. Microcontrollers have a multi-decade long lifespan. (I'm still seeing new 8051-based designs...)

There are still new chips using the Cortex-M3 today. Microcontroller devs do NOT want to be changing their code that often.

New chips move the core to lower-and-cheaper process nodes (and lower the power consumption), while otherwise retaining the same overall specifications and compatibility.

dragontamer5y ago

They're all low end embedded parts with highly integrated peripherals. Basically: a microcontroller.

No different than say, Cortex-M0 or M0+ in many regards (although ARM scales down to lower spec'd pieces).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse