I’ve never seen anything I’d call an MCU that has more than 2MB of SRAM (though a lot of them have the ability to address external buses for Flash and SRAM both semi-transparently, so there may be some dev boards that give more).
Wow. At that point my reaction is … it would be better to have an SoC. I mean I’m working with kit that typically has 64KB to 128KB of SRAM and thinking that I’m blessed with resources! 🤣
Yeah, there’s entire MPU platforms that are cheaper than the iMX RT500.
And the 0.40mm and/or 0.35mm pitch BGAs just confuse me even further. (Seriously, who is getting like 2.5mil trace/space and like 6 layers PCB for a microcontroller? But cannot afford the MPUs?)
I’m guessing iMX RT500 has some power-benefits. But… it just seems absurd all together to me. But good luck on NXP on finding customers for that thing.
I think its sole use case would be for that very, very, very narrow point of intersection between “extreme power management needs” and “extreme processing requirements”.
And it seems a bit quirky to make … that … chip for it.
I’ve never seen anything I’d call an MCU that has more than 2MB of SRAM (though a lot of them have the ability to address external buses for Flash and SRAM both semi-transparently, so there may be some dev boards that give more).
In case you missed the sibling comment: I just found the iMX RT500, a 249-pin BGA 'Microcontroller" with 5MB of SRAM.
https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-microcontrollers/i-mx-rt-crossover-mcus/i-mx-rt500-crossover-mcu-with-arm-cortex-m33-dsp-and-gpu-cores:i.MX-RT500
Which is absolutely the largest “microcontroller” I’ve ever heard of. But you’re right in that 2MB is already an absurdly huge size in most cases.
Wow. At that point my reaction is … it would be better to have an SoC. I mean I’m working with kit that typically has 64KB to 128KB of SRAM and thinking that I’m blessed with resources! 🤣
Yeah, there’s entire MPU platforms that are cheaper than the iMX RT500.
And the 0.40mm and/or 0.35mm pitch BGAs just confuse me even further. (Seriously, who is getting like 2.5mil trace/space and like 6 layers PCB for a microcontroller? But cannot afford the MPUs?)
I’m guessing iMX RT500 has some power-benefits. But… it just seems absurd all together to me. But good luck on NXP on finding customers for that thing.
I think its sole use case would be for that very, very, very narrow point of intersection between “extreme power management needs” and “extreme processing requirements”.
And it seems a bit quirky to make … that … chip for it.
But hey! At least it isn’t the STM32MP1! 🤣