Comment by rpaddock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rpaddock | Hacker News Reader

I'm not seeing them for 10 cents anyplace? Holtek 'Buy Online' shows $1.50 @ 500+. So I'm guessing the ten cent price comes in at orders of a million or more?

Holtek makes a lot of esoteric parts, such as the IC for musical greeting cards.

Resource wise these are around 8048 or 1802 style programming. The kind of stuff I love to do.

Some projects just can't afford heavy resource parts. The Toy Industry for one.

EM Microelectronics also makes LOW end parts. 4-Bit parts are still a thing.

https://www.emmicroelectronic.com/product?title=&term_node_t...

The Preface to Murphy's Law:

We, the willing, .Lead by the unknowing. ..Are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. ...We have done so much for so long, ....With so little, .....We are now qualified to do anything, ......With nothing, .......Forever!

I got the chip from a blog elsewhere (https://cpldcpu.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/the-terrible-3-cent...), advertised as a 8.75-cent MCU.

I did a brief search before posting, and one webpage suggested a 1000+ quantity price for $0.11 USD. However, upon closer inspection, this webpage is completely out-of-stock. (https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Others_Holtek-Semicon-HT...). I assumed the ~10-cent price point was still available and should have looked more into it before posting.

> Holtek 'Buy Online' shows $1.50 @ 500+

That is indeed terrible. ATTiny4 chips (cheapest chip on Digikey that's available... 512B Flash + 32B RAM) are available at 39-cents @100 Quantity from Digikey, so these HT68F001 chips need to come in significantly cheaper than the ATTiny4 before I consider them.

Sure, the ATTiny4 is like 20 uA at 128kHz, but this is all less than the leakage current of batteries, so we're definitely looking at multi-year battery lives. Also PWM, Analog Comparator, ADCs, and other such features are included. So its more capable.

In 2019, the HT68F001 _WAS_ a 8.75-cent chip or so. Alas, the 2020+ chip shortage may have killed the cost-effectiveness of this particular model.

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