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1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

ti.com

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Re: 1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

#101

Post by dragontamer »

amelius wrote: post #3
self_awareness wrote: post #2

It seems awesome, but I'm having a problem with figuring out how can a "normal" person use it. How would YOU use it, reader of this comment?

From the datasheet: Applications • Battery charging and management • Power supplies and power delivery • Personal electronics • Building security and fire safety • Connected peripherals and printers • Grid infrastructure • Smart metering • Communication modules • Medical and healthcare • Lighting

With a 12-bit singled ended ADC? That's laughable. You can't reliably measure current with this thing.

I'm not seeing any voltage comparators which are really useful for most of those use cases...

Now the MSPM0 series chips have a few OpAmps or a few better ADCs. TI also have proper power metering chips with 16-bit or 24-bit (!!!!!) ADCs for proper power metering.

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This is still a 12-bit ADC strapped onto a 8-pin chip. It's useful for something but not that whole list. Power metering? Heh, TI is smoking something or just using AI auto complete.

> Battery charging and management

> Power supplies and power delivery

> • Grid infrastructure

Those really want a comparator (100ns response time) rather than an ADC (10,000ns response time).

You also want zero-crossing detectors on grid infra, or other analog features that simply aren't available at this price point. Just no.

> • Smart metering

Lol very no. 16-bit ADC at a minimum, probably needs 24-bit delta sigma ADC instead (slower ADC but higher precision). TI has a bunch of MSP430 that do the job well.

Alternatively, an OpAmp or other amplifier can zoom into the current sensing circuits and make a 12-bit ADC work, but you need another bigger chip (the OpAmp), at which point you should be using an OpAmp+MCU solution instead.

Plus the "smart" part of metering needs a better communication module than bare bones basic UART. Maybe wireless of some kind or a DSP for custom modem work.

> • Communication modules

Just no. Waayyyyyyy to slow.

> • Personal electronics

> • Connected peripherals and printers

You have bigger, better chips for these.

> • Building security and fire safety

> • Medical and healthcare

> • Lighting

I think these three are legitimate good use cases.

Re: 1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

#102

Post by dragontamer »

self_awareness wrote: post #2

It seems awesome, but I'm having a problem with figuring out how can a "normal" person use it. How would YOU use it, reader of this comment?

Anyone using these small chips for hobbyist purposes probably should look at the more fully featured MSPM0-L line or MSPM0-G lines. Still Cortex-M0+ and in the sub $2 market... But hobbyists probably don't see much cost benefit below that (how many MCUs are you buying anyway??).

The L line and G lines have better ADCs, Comparators, better connectivity, and some of them even have on board OpAmps.

Tiny chips have a use of you are tying to build the absolute smallest devices. But hobbyists don't have the equipment to comfortably build things of this size.

Sizing up to VQFN packages and 0603 passives makes more sense for the typical hobbyist.

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As far as how a professional would use this, there are plenty of good uses of chips inside of cables or other kinds of smarts. Like a chip controlling a bunch of LEDs for example, based on voltage measurements elsewhere (there is a 12-bit ADC after all, which means you have rather solid voltage sensing from a few pins).

Basic voltage comparisons + math + crude timer and then a few pins for in/out gets you to a lot of useful projects. Albeit dumb ones. I dunno why anything needs to be this small in particular though.

Re: 1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

#103

Post by dragontamer »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #72
aa-jv wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Masses" of memory, it does not have. Sufficient to the task for synthesis? Maybe, if you do a fair bit of assembly ..

It's got 16kB of flash and 1kB of RAM, that's plenty.

The original Intel 8051 was 4k EROM and 128B of RAM and set the world on fire with its applications.

16kB Flash and 1kB SRAM is plenty.

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However, the analog capabilities of this thing are nearly trash. One ADC?? No comparators? No OpAmps? Ehhhhhhhh, this is really bare bones by modern standards.

Modern cheap chips differentiate themselves with how many analog components they stuff into one package so that they are easily used in a wide variety of situations.

The only real feature offered here is size. Which is impressive but definitely limiting compared to the rest of TI's MSPM0 (or even MSP430) lineup.

The best this MSPM0-C seems to be able to do, is ADC input -> PWM output. Which is... the bare minimum necessary for mixed signal control.

Resistor+capacitor for anti aliasing on input, resistor+capacitor (smooth the PWM) + transistor for output, and yeah we have a true system with feedback here. But it won't be as reliable or quick as other tools (comparators, OpAmps, or the like)

Re: 1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

#104

Post by random__duck »

self_awareness wrote: post #2

It seems awesome, but I'm having a problem with figuring out how can a "normal" person use it. How would YOU use it, reader of this comment?

Jewelry, most likely a fun pair of earning with a few small leds. I would pair it with a 4.8mm x 1.6mm coin battery for power.

Re: 1.38 Millimeter Microcontroller

#106

Post by watersb »

This 32-bit microcontroller has 1 kB of RAM.

The Apple Disk II Controller discussed yesterday used two 256-byte ROM chips and a shift register for dynamic memory.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48723102

The linked article of the Disk II Controller has great detail about the state machine encoded in one of the ROMs, and walks through the bootstrap code stored in the other one.

I haven't tried any microcontroller projects myself, but my first computer projects were on the small home micros of the early 1980s. I enjoy this kind of thinking.

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