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by ISL 4402 days ago
It'd be okay if you created an index of the price of the top-selling N microcontrollers at any given time, rather than tracking them for their entire life cycle. The 8086 was a great and important processor, but it's no longer relevant to any discussion of processor prices.

The S&P 500 does this for stocks; perhaps their implementation and design choices can find some application here?
3 comments
janineyoong 4402 days ago
Yes, that would definitely be ok! The microcontrollers included in this index are a function how we rank them in the Octopart search index, which reflects some element of "top-selling" but probably not adequately so (i.e. your point on the 8086 is a good one).

Regardless, we think stock indexes are indeed are good role model for this kind of exercise. If there's interest in this we might invest in: (a) continuing to track this with better documentation on how we do it, and (b) start tracking more categories of parts.

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jmpe 4402 days ago
"... but it's no longer relevant to any discussion of processor prices"

Kinda pedantic remark:

No longer relevant as a stand-alone device but don't overlook the IP core market. It's pretty common to find one or more of these old cores as a module in a more complex device (e.g. an FPGA) or as the base for an ASIC (esp. automotive). Same for the 8088, 8051, 6502, ...

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hkmurakami 4402 days ago
Do such uses of IP manifest itself in this price index though? (I presume not, since even bare silicon prices should be several cents cheaper than a final packaged discrete device for SIP uses)
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jmpe 4402 days ago
One extreme is ARM cores: incredibly popular, there are several in your laptop and probably half a dozen in your smartphone, ... ARM holdings is an IP & design company, they design & license cores.

But regarding those old cores I mentioned ... lots of use because it's legacy with lots of developers that know the architecture.

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hkmurakami 4402 days ago
If following the S&P500, you'd want to weight it by the equivalent of "market cap". From what I can tell from the caption on the price index [1], this seems to be an equal weight index (which in the case of the stock market, results in a larger beta than the actual index).

[1] http://octopart.com/component-price-index

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