Below are some relevant comments from a competent friend. The NXP ARM that he mentions is not as low cost as some others that Digikey list, but he also notes that it will be cheaper elsewhere. He does not work for NXP but probably has a reasonable idea of their pricing structure. Note the 32 cent in volume ST ARM Cortext M0 he mentions. ST value-line ARM here http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/active/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1574/LN182= 6?icmp=3Dln1826_pron_pr_jul2013 ST all ARM here http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/active/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169?icmp=3Dsc116= 9_pron_pr_jul2013 118 application notes http://www.st.com/stonline/stappl/resourceSelector/app?page=3DfullResourceS= elector&doctype=3Dapplication_note&SubClassID=3D1169 Russell ____________ The NXP LPC1112 is certainly real (although Digikey don't actually carry stock). Expect to get it for 2/3 to 1/2 of Digikey's price in large volumes from a high-volume (non-catalog) supplier like Arrow - and down to 1/2 of that again for very large volumes if you are big enough to deal with NXP directly. ST have just announced an entry-level (but still quite capable) ARM (Cortex M0) microcontroller for US$0.32 in large volumes. http://www.st.com/web/en/press/p3444 At 250uA/MHz when active, it won't win any prizes for low power consumption, but grunt-wise would eat the lunch of most traditional 8-bitters (and you get 16kB of Flash, 4kB of RAM, a 12-bit 1us muxed ADC, and DMA to keep the ADC busy without execution overhead). 32-bit ARM devices can be very frugal with respect to power. See for instance the portfolio from Energy Micro (recently acquired by Silicon Labs). They are claiming around 11uW/MHz (around 3-5uA/MHz at typical supply voltages) - although that's for the CPU core alone and you'd have to add the current drawn by active peripherals. If you are happy with a proprietary architecture TI's once-orphan MSP430 series are very power-efficient and last time I looked the lesser variants were getting down to around the US$0.50 mark at just 1k quantities= .. Freescale have their MC9SO8 part which I've heard gets down to under US$0.30 at just 100-off. I haven't used it but on paper it seems quite a reasonable 8-bitter (with 4k Flash, 128B EEROM, 512B RAM, and a muxed 12-bit ADC). As for the cheapest uC - that's anyones guess, and volume would obviously come into the equation, but I'd suggest that all other things being equal, a chinese/taiwanese/japanese 4-bit device might be the one. Ten years or so ago, one of our customers was using such in significant volumes (50k/annum) in a dumb remote control and their buy price (from NEC) was under US$0.20. I'd be very surprised if sub-$0.10 weren't the norm now. Die-level devices (for COB use) will also be significantly cheaper in large volumes than equivalent packaged devices. Packaging cost is a surprisingly high component of overall device cost once you get down to the 20c level. --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .