11–20 of 103 posts
This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title. There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now, including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and ag…
This is a good article but it's a few years old, and out of date now. I can't see its date with my current adblock settings. It would be great if someone could find it and put it in the title. There are stupendously powerful $1 microcontrollers now, including the RP2040 (dual core cortex m0+ with 264KB ram on the chip), ESP32-S2 (Espressif core with 400k of ram and wifi), and ESP32-C3 with wifi and RISC-V core and ag…
Wow, that's an incredibly capable chip for the price!
It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
In fact, even $1 microcontrollers are considered very expensive by industry standards. Cheapest micros hovered around 10 cents mark before the semiconductor crisis. Some Padauk micros go for single cents.
It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
I would argue that this kind of price is only doable because people and resources are being exploited for it. Not specifically only for these microcontrollers, but most our consumer products in general. In a worst case scenario, the resources for this $1 microcontroller were mined by an african child, barely earning anything. These resources are then shipped to China(probably), where people along the way don't earn m…
Speaking from a business and engineering perspective, I'd be surprised if (even in an ideal world with no environmental externalities or exploited third-world labourers) the cost of the raw resources, shipping and e-waste processing were a significant part of that $1.
We're literally talking about something 1/16 the size of a postage stamp that gets stamped into a similarly tiny plastic shell.
From my admittedly "peak mount stupid"[1] position as an engineer that uses these things, I'd suspect that the biggest contributors to that $1 figure come from the expert labour required to both R&D the chips as well as run the machines that manufacture them.
[1] http://theengineeringmanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact, even $1 microcontrollers are considered very expensive by industry standards. Cheapest micros hovered around 10 cents mark before the semiconductor crisis. Some Padauk micros go for single cents.
10cents dual core 32 bits arch ?
It's amazing that humanity can produce this sort of hardware under $1. This has implications that are more profound than previous industrial revolutions. In centuries from now, our time will be studied as a remarkably revolutionary one.
I would argue that this kind of price is only doable because people and resources are being exploited for it. Not specifically only for these microcontrollers, but most our consumer products in general. In a worst case scenario, the resources for this $1 microcontroller were mined by an african child, barely earning anything. These resources are then shipped to China(probably), where people along the way don't earn m…
