In SX Microcontrollers, SX/B Compiler and SX-Key Tool, viskr wrote:

So why don't you see next generation SX chips, or 8051s or other 8/16 bit processors?

The answer is based on Moore's Law, the number of transistors in a given area doubles every 2 years.

Most small embedded SOCs are pad limited these days, which means for a given number of pads the die will not get any smaller.

Add to that the size of the CPU is becoming a smaller fraction of these chips, with peripherals and memory taking up most of the space.

Add to that the cost of a mask set around $1M these days for even a 4 year old process.

What this all implies is it's expensive to develop a new chip let alone a lot of varieties.  The not so secret, dirty little secret is many of the variations of these chips are actually the same die, its just feature disabled at the factory.

The difference in area between an 8 bit CPU and a 32 bit CPU gets to be a rounding error.  With chips like ARM, in thumb mode even the advantage of code space is eliminated (thumb code is a 16 bit instruction version of ARM).  And the big advantage of a 32 bit chip over the 8/16 is the need to page memory goes away, as paging is a huge hassle.  Most code is now written in standard languages, mostly C, so portability becomes simpler.

Hence it makes no sense to update an 8/16 part.

FYI a 70MHz ARM with 32KB Flash, 8KB RAM, and some peripherals now goes for < $4, quantity 1

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