“There remains a clear market need for 8bit,” he contended, pointing out that Microchip is currently shipping around 4m such devices a day. “The 32bit market will continue to grow, because of the number of companies going that way, but we still see growth in demand.”
He recognised that, in order to be competitive, 8bit MCUs need to offer fast development time, high functionality and the ability for designers to balance software dependency with deterministic hardware performance.
The way forward, Drehobl contended – particularly for new users – is to lighten the design burden. “MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC) has been available for about a year and we’re seeing about 25,000 downloads a quarter. Designers are now using it as a primary tool; it minimises the amount of code which needs to be written and the need to read the datasheet to find out how to hook up peripherals. It can reduce months of development time to weeks and brings that balance between hardware and software.”
MCC v3.15 is set for launch early in 2016, bringing support for additional Microchip parts, as well as new libraries and hardware drivers.
