> 6502 cores are still found in some SoCs aimed at the ultra-low-cost high-volume market.
What's the reason behind that? Probably just keeping existing, working designs and thus saving R&D costs? Sounds like beating a 10 cent risc-v core would be hard.
Edit: When I first read your comment I had to chuckle a bit, because I got the image of a multicore SoC with 6502 6502 cores. That would be a fun project for my FPGA hmmmmmmmm ...
10c per part is incredibly high depending on how low-cost we're talking.
If your chip needs very basic processing, and you're going to sell it for less than a cent per chip, you need your core to be basically free.
Sure RISC-V is very inexpensive, but for parts like these risc is massive overkill and as a modern core, you'll be spending a lot of die area on a core that should really be an ASIC, but designing an ASIC is expensive so you can just slap a 6502 in that bad boy and call it a day.
On the other end of the scale, you'd be surprised to learn that many chips you don't ever interface with as a user contain even ARM cores. These are usually ASICs in high-end products.
16 registers * 32 bits * 4 transistors / cell = 2k transistors just for storing the bits alone, and that's not including the decoding and read/write circuitry.
What's the reason behind that? Probably just keeping existing, working designs and thus saving R&D costs? Sounds like beating a 10 cent risc-v core would be hard.
Edit: When I first read your comment I had to chuckle a bit, because I got the image of a multicore SoC with 6502 6502 cores. That would be a fun project for my FPGA hmmmmmmmm ...