Hello,Nowadays one often hears/readers about the transistor count of modernCPUs and GPUs. But what's the transistor count of common uCs like theMicrochip PIC, Atmel AVR or similar microcontrollers?Just being curious :-)Thank you in advance!Regards,johannes

> Nowadays one often hears/readers about the transistor count of modern> CPUs and GPUs. But what's the transistor count of common uCs like the> Microchip PIC, Atmel AVR or similar microcontrollers?
The complexity is usually not specified as the number of transistorsbut as number of gates, as a gate is the smallest entity of designlanguages like Verilog or VHDL (usually...).32-bit microcontrollers use something like 50~100k gates, not countingany memory. I would guess that a PIC needs well below 10kG and the AVRa little bit more. But that is a very rough estimation. In the usualimplementations a gate consists of four transistors on average, so youmight multiply the above figures by four to get an approximate numberof transistors. For SRAM you should add four to six transistors perbit, for Flash or ROM it is in the order of one transistor per bit.Btw, semiconductor companies calculate cost in mm*mm, at least as afirst approximation for mature processes, not in number of transistorsor gates.Michael

"johannes m.r." wrote:
> Hello,>> Nowadays one often hears/readers about the transistor count of modern> CPUs and GPUs. But what's the transistor count of common uCs like the> Microchip PIC, Atmel AVR or similar microcontrollers?> Just being curious :-)> Thank you in advance!> Regards,> johannes
The 8080 microprocessor back in 1975 had less than 5000 transistors whereasthe 2.2 GHz Pentium IV using .13 micron technology had about 42 million andsome graphics processors have considerably more (the ATI 9700 had about 110million).High end processors today are pushing 500 million transistors and expected tohit 1 billion by 2005 to 2006.  The transistor count has been growing by about40% per year.In contrast, the RISC processor, PowerPC 401 has only about 85000 transistors.Microcontrollers are generally less complex than microprocessors and oftenhave the RICS architecture (even though they do have more peripheralsintegrated onto the chip) so I would guess they fall in the 100,000transistors range although I haven't seen actual numbers published.Ref:http://www.siliconstrategies.com/article/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=10802738Jerry------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Petrey   -   Senior Principal Systems Engineer-- Navigation (GPS/INS), Guidance, & Control-- Raytheon Missile Systems  - Member Team Ada & Team Forth-- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Jerry Petrey @raytheon.com>" <"jdpetrey<NOSPAM> skrev i meddelandetnews:40A11B08.3C0DC036@raytheon.com...
>>> "johannes m.r." wrote:>> > Hello,> >> > Nowadays one often hears/readers about the transistor count of modern> > CPUs and GPUs. But what's the transistor count of common uCs like the> > Microchip PIC, Atmel AVR or similar microcontrollers?> > Just being curious :-)> > Thank you in advance!> > Regards,> > johannes>> The 8080 microprocessor back in 1975 had less than 5000 transistors
whereas
> the 2.2 GHz Pentium IV using .13 micron technology had about 42 million
and
> some graphics processors have considerably more (the ATI 9700 had about
110
> million).> High end processors today are pushing 500 million transistors and expected
to
> hit 1 billion by 2005 to 2006.  The transistor count has been growing by
about
> 40% per year.>> In contrast, the RISC processor, PowerPC 401 has only about 85000
transistors.
>> Microcontrollers are generally less complex than microprocessors and often> have the RICS architecture (even though they do have more peripherals> integrated onto the chip) so I would guess they fall in the 100,000> transistors range although I haven't seen actual numbers published.>
IIRC, The AVR core is 12,000 gates, and the megaAVR core is 20,000 gatesEach gate is 4 transistors. The chip is considerably larger since the memoryuses quite a lot.The ATmega128 is probably somewhere between 600k-1M transistors.For comparision:The AT91R40008 ARM7 micro is probably 2 M transistors.The ultimate CISC microprocessor, the NS32016 was but 60,000 transistors.-- Best Regards,Ulf Samuelsson   ulf@a-t-m-e-l.comThis is a personal view which may or may not beshare by my Employer Atmel Nordic AB

> > IIRC, The AVR core is 12,000 gates, and the megaAVR core is 20,000 gates> Each gate is 4 transistors.
Interesting. Do these numbers include peripherals or are they just forthe core CPU?Cheers,Jon