Mike Harrison wrote:
.......
>>Back in the early 90s, I was consulting with a company that had
>>been using about 5000 of a particular 6805-variant every year for
>>about 5 years, and then suddenly couldn't get them anymore - the
>>chips weren't phased out, just on allocation [ie, generally
>>unavailable] status. This lesson taught me a very lot about
>>companies with 500 "variants".
>Not sure I agree  :.
>Microchip : zillions of variants, no supply problems
>Atmel : very few varients, all unobtainable (until recently)


Well, having lived through it with Mot, and given the way Mchp
is popping out new variants, it remains to be seen whether they
can keep them all in production as time goes on - but past
experience [not superstition] gives one pause.

I suspect this is a kind of "threshold" phenomenon. One day
comes, and it's big a new billion$$ fab facility, or change
your dynamics. I am sure operations theory types know these
answers better than a lowly design engineer [me] - I'm just
caught in the middle. I wanted to design some FIFOs into a
product last year, but no one in the US had them [or the 40
other variants] in stock --> forget the FIFOs.

Re Atmel, it is probably a totally different issue - more
like ramp-up problems due to high demand, rather than
decisions on which/when to manufacture.

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