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Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#32Impressive price point. I'd like to understand, what can you realistically do with these?
Make a LED candle?
https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/09/28/a-led-candle-based-...
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> A 32-bit CPU is way too big for this price point still.
Not sure what you mean by "this price point" but CH32V003 is RISC-V and around 10 cents. It is only 6 times more expensive.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#34It seems to use 1ma when on, so if you hooked this up to one of the larger smartphone batteries at 5000 mah, this could run for 200 days. I'm not sure what you'd do with that, but I think as power consumption drops to 0 on these sorts of thing it might make some remote sensing applications cheaper/easier to deploy, if you could just deploy it with a battery and forget about it for a year or two.
1. I believe modern 8-bitters at 32kHz (yes: KHz. This is a very common wristwatch crystal and is the slowest you can run many chips....) use like 50uA.
2. If you take advantage of sleep states, it is possible to reach single-digit uA but this is difficult. Even the leakage currents of your capacitors (0.1uA to 10uA, depending on chemistry and conditions) starts to overwhelm your microcontroller.
3. Case in point. Internal leakage of most batteries is in the 1uA to 100uA range.
4. Alkaline (AA, AAA, AAA, and 9V) and CR2032 batteries are very very low leakage.
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2 years might be on the easy side, especially if you use AA batteries. That way a 10uA leak isn't really that big a deal. This is aiming at a 150uA circuit or less which is fine.
With a bit of effort, it's not too hard to run a circuit for 5 years. But you do need to really watch the leakage currents and carefully design it. That's under 70uA with the AA batteries.
10years is probably pushing it even with an Alkaline or Lithium CR2032, but it's theoretically doable.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t that rather a lot of current for what it is? I didn’t read the datasheet but I imagine it has to have a lower power mode than that. Much larger MCUs can manage an average power consumption far lower and power off the same battery for periods measured in years, not days. This is simple enough you’d think you’d be able to power it off an EM field directly!
If you slow it down to 1MHz you can get it down to 0.5 ma. If you switch to low frequency oscillation at 32kHz it gets into low-double-digit microamps.
Yeah that's high, considering that a lot of 8-bitters are also in that ballpark and we haven't talked sleep states yet (with a few X00nA class sleepers out there).
In any case, Tomagachi is famously a 32kHz toy. There's a lot you can do at 32kHz.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#36English data sheet: https://www.nyquest.com.tw/upload/2024_02_293/NY8A051H_v1.6....
38kHz support for IR is a nifty feature (this is the "TV Remote" signal).
Its a real niche, this is probably the cheapest thing that can make a TV Remote. A couple of AA batteries and you'll have 5 years of life. Forget "sleep", a lot of TV Remotes just go fully off after each button press. When a button is pressed, reset the computer, figure out which button, send the IR signal at 38kHz and then turn off again. The end.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#37Impressive price point. I'd like to understand, what can you realistically do with these?
The 38kHz signal support clearly indicates that this is a TV Remote Control chip.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#38What would be a comparable early computer with the same computational power? Amazing to think how a machine the size of a room is now only a penny!
The 8051, first released in 1980, the 8051 effectively created the microcontroller market. 4kB ROM and 128B of SRAM for the original 8051. It always was on the small side.
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We have to go earlier than 1980 but I'm not quite familiar with all of those computers.
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#39I 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.
My guess is that testing complexity is a function of the number of gates, so it doesnt matter too much if they are on a big die or many small dies.
Also testing is an extremly paralell process, scaling with the number of connections you can connect to the tested wafer, and recent technology(from testing hbm ram) can really scale that:
https://www.formfactor.com/applications/high-volume-test-on-...
Re: Nyquest NY8A051H – 1.5 cent microcontroller: weekend die-shot
#40Do you have to get these programmed at the factory?
Programming is done by selecting a memory address and burning the fuses behind it, using higher voltage.
Or it can be done via laser, scanning the wafer and burning the fuses.