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by sneed_chucker 1060 days ago
Are 6502 chips still used? What's the application?
5 comments

Skynet is due to start producing their T-800 line of Terminators in 2026, which will use a 6502-derived CPU.
Tamagochis are running on 6502 compatible chips. Which makes me think it is used in other toys, too.
What are the top embedded usage chips and what is their typical niche?
I wouldn't know. I just watched a talk a couple of years back about reverse engineering tamagochis, and they turned out to run on some 6502 compatible chip made by a company that - IIRC - sells to toy makers mostly.
I was surprised to learn a few months ago that 6502's are still in production, so there must be some use for it. Perhaps replacement parts for industrial equipment from the 70s-90s?
> Are 6502 chips still used?

Largely, no. I'm sure there's a few out there, but it's unusual.

Embedded 8051 cores, on the other hand... we're probably never going to fully escape those.

8051 was once big in industrial applications like PLCs.

Somehow I doubt much has changed. In such applications, reliability + maturity of hw/sw ecosystem is much more important than raw speed or design innovations a competing architecture might bring to the table.

So 8051 based parts may see the occasional process shrink, addition of new peripherals, or new IC packages, I/O pin counts, operating voltage etc.

But I'd doubt any designer worth their salt would dare touch that core architecture unless their life depended on doing so. :-)

8051 is quite popular in new designs as a low-cost embedded controller. You don't see it as often as a discrete component [1]; it's more frequently embedded in more complex devices, like as controllers for USB peripherals or even for startup sequencing in larger parts.

[1]: Although that is a thing too; there's a number of manufacturers like Silicon Labs with extensive lines of modern 8051-based mcirocontrollers.

I don't know anything about physical 6502's but they've been embedded in FPGAs where you need a small MCU in a larger design. Same with Intel 8051's.