Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
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Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#2I can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#3English data sheet: https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6....
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#4I can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
They probably don't test. Yield is likely high enough that failures are the responsibility of the customer.
Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads. It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#5I can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
Everything is automated. Testing a simple micro with few pins can be extremely fast.
Look up some modern factory tour videos. The RGB LED factory videos are interesting to watch. You can see how the bulk of the work is completely automated. Once the machines are set up, you let them run and collect the output.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#6I can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
They probably don't test. Yield is likely high enough that failures are the responsibility of the customer. Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads. It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling.
No, they _are_ tested during manufacturing.
> Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads
A 32-bit CPU is way too big for this price point still.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#7I can understand how the material cost is low for such a tiny chip -- it said 337,000 of them fit on a wafer, but testing time must cost more than 1.5 cents per die.
They probably don't test. Yield is likely high enough that failures are the responsibility of the customer. Honestly, this is where I'd love RISC-V to be making inroads. It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling.
> It would be really nice to have a super simple processor with a standard architecture and tooling.
Pragmatically speaking, that architecture already exists -- it's the 8051. (This part is a PIC clone, but 8051 is also extremely common.)
RISC-V has promise for larger microcontrollers, but really tiny ones like these (48 bytes RAM, 1KB ROM) are better off with an 8-bit architecture.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#8How does programming on this thing work? The datasheet doesn't go into very much detail, except there's SDI, SDO, SCK, and Vpp pins.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#9At these sizes, the packaging is probably a significant fraction of the cost. They may also offer a bare die version at Despite its name, this is not an 8051. Looks like this competes with the PIC10F200 which costs dozens of times more yet has a similar "RISC" (that's what they call it, but it's more like an 8-bit accumulator architecture) ISA and general layout.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#10How does programming on this thing work? The datasheet doesn't go into very much detail, except there's SDI, SDO, SCK, and Vpp pins.
Like an 8051, I guess?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCS-51
ny8a051h