ARM Drives Momentum In Microcontrollers With Keil Acquisition
Yeah, but their cornering performance is awful, as is the braking distance. Apparently ARM bought Keil. Here's a link to more information. http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/news/view_article.asp?article_id=9859
"Apparently ARM bought Keil." Goodbye C51.
Also as part of ARM, we will continue to enhance and provide Keil tools for non-ARM processor-based 8/16-bit MCUs, under the Keil brand. There is no reason for our users to worry about that. We will continue to add new upcoming 8/16-bit devices as we did in the past. The benefit for our C51/C251/C166 users will be that they can have a smooth transition to 32-bit ARM based devices. Reinhard Keil
"The benefit for our C51/C251/C166 users will be that they can have a smooth transition to 32-bit ARM based devices." You mean I can get a good discount on a Keil ARM toolset...? ;-)
I note that that Keil logo has already changed colour, and "An ARM Company" has been added. That was quick! Shame they couldn't have sealed the Triscend deal so quickly... :-(
Heh. I hadn't noticed the logo change. Now they have to change the menu bar color to match, and so ARM teal will clash with the yellows and greens. Jon will have to completely redo the color scheme. Maybe it'll become Prussian blue and orange. http://www.arm.com/
Maybe Jon first needs to teach ARM how to build a website. A 2Mbyte Banner home page does not make me a happy camper. My ISP handles most inet via carrier pigeon and pretty pictures with little or no info will not make the ARM home page marked as one of My Favorites.
"Now they have to change the menu bar color..." Since ARM is an English company, they will also have to learn how to spell "colour" properly...! ;-)
"My ISP handles most inet via carrier pigeon..." In accordance with the official Avian Carrier specification, I trust: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
Andy; If my ISP would follow these specs they could increase my through put considerably.
"they have to change the menu bar color (sic) to match" Now they've done it!
The About Keil Software company info page hasn't changed yet, though... http://www.keil.com/company/default.htm
Or the Thread List bar, or the Product Overview table, or... All the old blues and greens and yellows and reds now clash with teal. Tsk tsk. I wonder what the budget is for color-coordinating changes to all the websites, product literature, manuals, GUIs, letterhead, business cards...
Hello Mr. Keil and all others, I have been discussing this news the whole day on another forum, but just wanted to check http://www.keil.com before ending the day. I have great respect for you, but I do not think that your 8051 customers will see a happy future if they want to stick with you and 8051. Why would your new owners put any priority on serving the 8051 market? A new 8051 design is a potential lost ARM or cortex design. I understand you have to say "dont worry" to your customers, but we are worried. I of course dont know the details of the deal, but if I were ARM, I know what I would focus on. I felt it personally before with ST7 and Hiware when they were bought by Motorola. I guess it was similar for Metaware when they were bought by ARC. U.s.w. All the best for the future with ARM. You have done a good job for the 8051/C51 world. Best Regards Joseph
A new 8051 design is a potential lost ARM or cortex design I'd have to disagree. Some no doubt think that way, but there's a world of difference between an ARM7 and an 8051. The ARM7 is something like 15x the gate count and die area of an 8051. The ARM7 will typically require 2.5-3x the memory of the 8051 simply due to lower code density. Usually the applications requiring an ARM7 are complex enough to require a change to SDRAM and parallel flash. The wider address and data bus drives up pin count, may force a change to a more expensive package, and may increase board layer count for ease of layout. Embed large amounts of RAM on your chip, and your yield suffers unless you move to expensive high-density RAM processes. Embed flash on your chip, and the extra metal layers similarly cost you. All of these changes and others add to the "ripple effect" increase in cost of a chip with an embedded ARM instead of an 8051. If you don't need the extra power, it would be a mistake to throw in an ARM just because you can -- never mind the ARM NRE and per-piece fees which you don't pay for an 8051 core. The ARM costs significantly more. That's fine when it's solving significantly more problems for you, but if it's mostly idle, it's a huge waste of money for the customers. Even if "the CPU is only $5", then when you sell a million units, that's $5M of lost profit, or likely more like $20M increase in end-user cost. And that can indeed make a difference to the decision of whether or not even to buy the product. When it comes to embedding processors in ASICs, ARM and 8051 really aren't competing in the same market. ARM competes with MIPS and low end PPCs, not 8051s. Lots of people can eventually solve problems by typing long enough, and then they try to justify the "need" for a big processor based on their overly-complex solution. But good engineering consists of using exactly the resources needed to solve the problem, and no more.
A new 8051 design is a potential lost ARM or cortex design I'd have to disagree. Some no doubt think that way, but there's a world of difference between an ARM7 and an 8051. Drew, I think you are making very valid points from a technical point of view. My point is however that this can not be ARM Ltds point of view. Basically, both you and ARM can not be both right at the same time. I think that the big differences you describe in 8051 micros and ARM micros is the problem ARM wants to solve with their new cortex, and buying Keil is going to "accelerate" this as it reads in the pressrelease. So for ARM, who now controls Keil, every new 8051 design is a lost ARM or cortex design, and every new Keil 8051 compiler support agreement renewing is a delayed ARM or cortex design. Good or bad? It depends on what your plans are using ARM micros. My guess - if you plan to stick with 8051 for a while, dont expect ARM to provide you with good tools and support in the long run... Pessimistic? Yes, but I have seen it happen before. Best Regards Joseph