The Octopart Microcontroller Price Index
octopart.com
octopart.com
Track mips/watt/$ and ram/$ along with forecast lines. If design with $3 part now, I'd like to know that it will drop to 1.75 in 2 years.
I find it rather ironic that filtering by price in product selectors is new and or rare. We exist in an economy predicated on cost efficiencies, where many of my designs are driven primarily on a price-point, part selection is an iterative process where cost absolutely plays a role and often the first one.
I suppose it is much more common to ask "what is the cheapest thing that can do foo and bar" rather than "what we can get for x dollars"
Boolean satisfiability allows me to meet a design criteria, derivatives allow me to innovate.
I would like to predict when full blown linux can run on a single chip (on die ram and flash) for less than $2 or below 10 mW. I'd like to be able to track when thresholds are crossed or a combination of features exist at a price point.
The S&P 500 does this for stocks; perhaps their implementation and design choices can find some application here?
Regardless, we think stock indexes are indeed are good role model for this kind of exercise. If there's interest in this we might invest in: (a) continuing to track this with better documentation on how we do it, and (b) start tracking more categories of parts.
Kinda pedantic remark:
No longer relevant as a stand-alone device but don't overlook the IP core market. It's pretty common to find one or more of these old cores as a module in a more complex device (e.g. an FPGA) or as the base for an ASIC (esp. automotive). Same for the 8088, 8051, 6502, ...
But regarding those old cores I mentioned ... lots of use because it's legacy with lots of developers that know the architecture.