[pharke]

I wonder if there's a good business in the mix of these ideas. If a lot of manufacturers actually are using over powered chips because they are a) more available and b) easier to program with newer tooling then one might be able to find a niche making cheaper/simpler/older style chips if they also provided modern tooling making it easier to program them for simple tasks like weighing things, blinking lights, playing little tunes, reading a sensor, etc. I've heard good things about PlatformIO so leveraging that ecosystem could be a win as far as avoiding creating your own IDE. Producing great documentation for the products would also go a long way towards gaining adoption.

[baybal2]

No the challenge is exactly the opposite.

Tons of chips still made at >130nm, and 200mm equipment for simple reasons that companies don't make much money, or not having much volume in this stuff.