It's 2015 and the 6502 is still kicking?

[cbmeeks]

I have to admit, I get a little nervous sometimes when I see these microcontrollers that can do everything under the Sun for < $5. Then I think, why in the world would anyone need a 6502??

Then I try to comfort myself by imagining that there are millions of devices out there that need to be maintained and redesigning (and manufacturing) them with an AVR or PIC would be too costly when you can buy a $7 65c02.

Anyway, I know no one has a crystal ball, but what kind of lifespan do you still see for our favorite MPU?

For that matter, does the same rules apply to the 6522?

Anyone aware of any *new* products in any industry that calls for 6502's?

This isn't a gloom-n-doom topic, I'm just curious.

[BigEd]

I do wonder how big the hobbyist market is. Mouser has hundreds or thousands of 6502s in stock - can they really be going to industrial uses? On the upside, the 6502 chips must be so small that running off a lot shouldn't cost too much, and so long as they sell, WDC can keep doing that. We've speculated before about how much stock there might be before another lot is run - another bigger question is what would it take for WDC to make a new mask set, whether to fix a bug or to go down to a smaller process. So long as the current process is still in production, we're probably OK.

The thing to bear in mind is that WDC is a very small family outfit. Having got the design done and the masks made and the documentation written, they don't have a lot to do to keep things going. Bill Mensch won't last forever - none of us will - and that might be the point at which we find out if the business has a succession plan and a future.

The volume for WDC has, I think, long been in the IP licensing rather than the chip business. The 6502 core has been used in toys, calculators, medical devices. I think toys is a major category. Recently I posted a finding that an optical mouse chip had a 6502 in it. There could easily be other embedded uses.

Recently WDC started selling a dev board, with a CPU chip and an FPGA. Their hope is to tap into the "maker" phenomenon and get people designing interesting new things based on 6502 (or 65816) - how that's going is anyone's guess, but it does mean there's some effort going into developing the business.
http://wdc65xx.com/

[BigDumbDinosaur]

cbmeeks wrote:

Anyone aware of any *new* products in any industry that calls for 6502's?

This isn't a gloom-n-doom topic, I'm just curious.

Most of today's sales of 65xx technology comes in ASIC form, not in discrete microprocessors. Manufacturers purchase a Verilog design flow from WDC, use it to program FPGAs or whatever, and then pay a royalty to WDC per unit shipped. In essence, the ASIC is a custom form of a microcontroller that has been optimized for a particular product, such as a cell phone or a microwave oven. Overall functionality and tight integration to the end product are the main goals, and the fact that the 65xx architecture is very flexible makes it a natural candidate for this sort of usage. Further helping matters is that the 65C02 and 65C816 ISA are certified for use in medical devices, especially implanted defibrillators and pacemakers.

As Ed notes, WDC is family-owned and has developed a very successful business model that proven to be unusually stable over the years (WDC is now in its 38th year of operation). WDC has a well-known product line that has been in continuous production since the early 1980s, and receives royalties from the hundreds of millions of 65C02s and 65C816s that are shipped every year in ASIC form. Although WDC is closely held, it's not too difficult to estimate that they see annual revenues of 8-10 million USD, which is exceptionally good for such a small company. It continues to be a successful business model and as Ed said, one that is not likely to diminish anytime soon if a succession plan is in place.

As an interesting aside, the 65C02 has been successfully realized in ASIC form that is capable of 200 MHz operation. Presumably, the 65C816 could be similarly realized. I wouldn't mind having a 200 MHz 65C816 to monkey with.

[cbmeeks]

That makes a lot of sense. So their primary bread-n-butter is more than likely IP sales. Binary data vs. hardware components.

I can see how that would be beneficial to companies that want an MPU to go into an FPGA or ASIC design. 6502 is widely supported and easy to program.

So it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of the actual 6502's (all the variants) in inventory are used for hobbyist and repairing old equipment.

Well, let's just hope that WDC has a good succession plan in place. Surely they would. I'm a little surprised that some other company hasn't tried to buy them outright. Heck, imagine if Zilog owned the rights! There would be riots in the streets! LOL

[BigDumbDinosaur]

cbmeeks wrote:

So it's probably safe to say that the vast majority of the actual 6502's (all the variants) in inventory are used for hobbyist and repairing old equipment.

Some of the discrete parts do find their way into new commercial designs. My POC unit is an outgrowth of a custom 65C816-based machine controller that my company has sold to a client. Garth Wilson's employer sells an aircraft product that is designed around a discrete 65C02.

Quote:

I'm a little surprised that some other company hasn't tried to buy them outright.

It probably has been tried—there's just no way to know for certain, since WDC is closely held.

Quote:

Heck, imagine if Zilog owned the rights! There would be riots in the streets! LOL

That would be cause for rioting, I'd say! We don't need any of that Z80 stuff polluting the 6502.

[Alienthe]

Discrete chips with 6502 etc. are still useful got prototyping boards, especially if you also need analogue parts and cannot make the entire prototype inside an FPGA. WDC makes some truly impressive claims:

Quote:

Annual volumes in the hundreds (100’s) of millions of units keep adding in a significant way to the estimated shipped volumes of five (5) to ten (10) billion units.

Few processors can claim a reliability track record like 6502. I see high reliability devices like heart defibrillation and pacing systems are mentioned by WDC.

A small chip implies also a small number of transistors and thus requires little power and little chip area.

BigEd wrote:

it's not too difficult to estimate that they see annual revenues of 8-10 million USD

How do you arrive at these figures? I though 8-bit cores were closer to 1 cent in royalty. Add some IO for another cent or so and I get about 2 million USD.

[BigEd]

Just to clarify, that estimate is not mine but BDD's:

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

...it's not too difficult to estimate that they see annual revenues of 8-10 million USD

(it seems on the high side to me, but I'm not sure how I'd estimate. I had a quick look for Arizona company tax returns but found nothing... did find this which estimates $1-$2.5million.)