Mike Singer <PICLIST@mitvma.mit.edu> wrote:

> Maybe we all should go in sleep mode, until Microchip starts
> producing devices on 0.13-micron low-k copper process.

    Yeah, right.  Plan on sleeping for a LONG time.

    Microchip's process technology has always been a few generations
    behind the state of the art.  At this moment, for example,
    they're moving production of 24AA01 EEPROMs from their 1.2
    micron process to the "new" 0.5 micron process.

    Two years ago, a Microchip representative at the Boston SNUG 2000
    conference seemed quite happy to admit that, "At 0.5 microns, we
    are in the bottom 5% of design flows.  About 40% [of the
    chip-design community] are using 0.35, 40% are at 0.25 microns,
    15% are at 0.18 microns and below."

    Does this sound like a company eager to explore the bleeding edge
    of deep sub-micron design?  Why would they bother, when it's so
    easy for them to make money producing chips with dirt-cheap
    equipment that 95% of the world considers obsolete?

> There is a rumour, Microchip has intentions to become partially a
> sort of a "fabless" supplier, based on the Xilinx and others most
> advanced semiconductor 0.13-micron process technologies.

    Not a very believable rumor.

    Why would Microchip want or need the state-of-the-art processes
    that UMC or IBM (or whomever) provide for Xilinx?  As far as I
    know, most PICs are pad-limited already, so a newer process
    won't make them any smaller.  The PICs are already pretty
    efficient, so Microchip doesn't need the power savings that a
    newer process might provide, either.

> For the first time it may convert some microcontroller lines to
> 0.13-micron FPGA or CPLD, using existing software. I don't know is
> this truth, or not, nobody knows, I think. Sounds great, cause we
> may get a chip with 16 bit core and a lot of free cells to be
> configured via ICSP as one wish.

    It doesn't appear hard to design a PIC-compatible core in VHDL
    or Verilog (see http://www.opencores.org/projects/minirisc/ for
    an example), so if someone wanted a PIC in his CPLD or FPGA, he'd
    probably just spend a couple days and design it himself.  Except
    for (maybe) some legal concerns, there's no real reason to wait
    for Microchip to release an "official" core.

    I don't think there's a big market for a synthesizable PIC core,
    though, since the aspects of the PIC that could be captured in
    VHDL aren't the things that make actual PICs so popular.  I can
    think of LOTS of applications (starting with the scores of
    PIC-based products that I did in my previous life) where a real
    PIC is superior to all other microcontrollers, but I can't think
    of ANY applications for a PIC-compatible core in an FPGA that
    wouldn't be served as well or better by a different solution.

    Just my opinion; I could be wrong.

    -Andy

=== Andrew Warren -- aiw@cypress.com
=== Principal Design Engineer
=== Cypress Semiconductor Corporation
===
=== Opinions expressed above do not
=== necessarily represent those of
=== Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

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