Mitchel Obolsky is Vice President of the Advanced Microcontroller Architecture Division (AMAD) at Microchip Technology, a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors. Obolsky looks after the entire business operations of AMAD. EDN Asia recently spoke to him. Excerpts:
CPUs have been advancing rapidly from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit and beyond, but MCUs have been only limping on this trail. Any comment?
Mitchel:The MCU is a needbased product. The real need for higher speeds is not evolving. Most applications still need MCUs at 8-bit. Though 16-bit and 32-bit MCUs have come up, to cater for very high performance like engine control in cars, or navigation systems in automobiles, mainstream MCUs will continue to be 8-bit by volume for many years. Some applications that were earlier using 8-bit MCUs are moving to 16-bit and 32-bit MCUs. New applications that were not using MCUs at all are now using 8-bit MCUs. Many more such applications will continue to migrate to 8-bit MCUs, keeping the market for 8-bit MCUs thriving. Besides, products are using increasing numbers of MCUs. For instance, an average car now uses almost 50 MCUs, but very soon this number will grow to between 80 and 100.
Mitchel:Though 8-bit will continue to form the largest segment of the MCU market, the growth rate of 16-bit will be higher, and it will drive the MCU market. For instance, in 2004, 8-bit grew by 12 percent, with revenue of $5.49 billion, while 16-bit grew by 21 percent, with revenue of $4.09 billion.
With the range of 49 16-bit MCUs and DSCs that Microchip introduced in Q405, what options are now available to the embedded designer that were not available before?
Mitchel:Some of the greatest challenges embedded system designers face are delivering projects on time while keeping costs within budget and responding to new customer and marketing requests, and at the same time providing product differentiation. Microchip’s new product families address these needs up to 40 MIPs,which is the industry’s highest performance for 16-bit MCUs. For 8-bit MCU users, PIC24 and dsPIC33F families offer a cost-effective increase in performance, memory and peripherals, while maintaining architectural efficiencies that embedded control applications require. The new products provide a seamless migration path from mid-range 8-bit MCUs to PIC24 and dsPIC33 families in terms of nomenclature, pin and peripheral compatibility. Besides, engineers can lower tool investment and learning curve through Microchip’s MPLAB IDE platform, which works across more than 350 8-bit and 16-bit offerings we provide.
Which are the best applications for these products?
Mitchel:The PIC24F series is best for applications pushing the envelope of 8-bit microcontroller capabilities. For more demanding applications, such as CAN communication modules, PIC24H is ideal. The dsPIC33 provides economical solutions for applications requiring large memory, I/O or substantial performance at 3.3V. One product line of dsPIC33 aims at general purpose products like two way radios, answering machines, hands-free kit, modems, security systems and medical monitoring systems. The second line deals with motor-control and power conversion, such as in sewing machines, washing machines, environmental control, LED lighting arrays, electric vehicles, etc. The fact is that we have now a horizontal on which there can be many verticals.
Is Microchip trying to unify MCU with DSP?
Mitchel:In some applications, yes. For instance, in metering applications you need both MCU and DSP. With dsPIC DSCs and PIC24 MCUs, Microchip today is the only company with truly unified DSP and MCU product lines. The dsPIC33 family gives MCU users an easy migration path to DSP performance.
Is it feasible to unify MCU with FPGA?
I can’t say no. But at present it is not cost effective.
What would you say is the most important trend in MCUs today?
Mitchel:For any given application, the need for MCUs is going up, and the technology is advancing, but the price is falling. This trend will continue.
We are now more than a decade into the 21st century, and on an ever-accelerating fast track to technological innovation in electronics. The transistor and progression into the IC, or microchip, lit the fuse leading to the explosion of innovations in electronics that is now taking place. Since the wi ...
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