>> but have you looked at the new Freescale chips RS08 series -
>> MC9RS08KAx

> When the ATtiny11 went away, these seemed to take over the position of
> lowest cost 8-pin flash microcontroller, in moderate quantities ($0.38
> @ 2500 @ mouser.)  I think they still hold that position, though I
> guess at high quantity it depends on what you can negotiate...

Several PICs are as cheap or cheaper.
10F200 around $US0.34/3000 Digikey.
16F54 slightly dearer using uChip's guide.

Microchip's selection guide gives 5000 quantity budegtary pricing and you
can generally get somewhat lower than that in similar volumes and presumably
a bit lower again in real volume.

The RS08's are nice but appear 'too expensive' for me.
$US0.378 / 2500 here
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=MC9RS08KA1CDBR-ND


These will probably be cheaper :-)

    http://www.holtek.com.tw/English/products/mcu_33.htm

I think the ATTiny11 price was articiu\ially low as an endline product.
It's great problem was lack of adequate power on reset / antibrownout 
control making it  excessively risky to use in real world situations.

The ST7FOX is extremely good value for money. (Digikey 43.2 cents / 2000, 2K 
flash, 128B RAM, 5 x 10 bit ADC, 8 SOIC ) *BUT* is 5 volt only, which makes 
it close to unusable for me. That said, I can do a 1 x NimH cell to 5V 
supply for $US0.10 - 0.15 but that adds further to already excessive cost.
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=ST7FOXA0M6-ND


______________________

Vitaliy asks re application.
Initially, "advanced portable personal lighting products" and close 
relatives (no surprise there) but, anything that needs a processor that 
needs to be really really really cheap.
But, any number of related and unrelated things if the price was low enough.

Given no timer, no interupts, no hardware peripherals and maybe even no 
subroutines one could STILL make use of a processor that was cheap enough. 
The arcaneries of isochnonous operation may rise to haunt you (especially so 
if you try to do eg sigma delta ADC conversion without a timer) but still 
doable if one must. Given cheap enough it would be doable.
What I have at present is burgeoning discrete hardware creep and a desire to 
limit assembly costs and physical complexity. Depending on your costing 
model, you can get a 1% resistor for around US 0.1 cents BUT it may cost 
several times that to install it. 0.5c+ resistors add up :-(. A 20 cent 
processor (ideally with a timer) would be a clear winner. A 30 cent one only 
maybe so.


             Russell




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