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Energy Micro has introduced as version of its low power Geko microcontroller which comes with a sub-dollar (60p) price tag.
This follows Texas Instruments with a 15p variant of the 16-bit MSP430 microcontroller.
Dubbed the Tiny Geko (TG) microcontrollers they are slimmed down versions of the original device with smaller flash and RAM combinations in QFN20, QFN32 and QFN64 packages.
"The original Geko comes with 32-128kbyte of flash and does not really compete with the low-end 8bit market. Tiny Geko does compete with the 8-bit market.," Geir Førre, CEO of Energy Micro told EW.
Tiny Gekos are archetecturally the same as Gekos although some peripherals have been dropped "some timers and some UARTs", said Førre.
Only 4-32kbyte flash and 1-4kbyte RAM is available.
According to Førre, the bottom-end part will sell for 99 cents (60p) in 100k quantities.
The two ranges overlap, with several Tiny Gekos having the same flash and RAM as devices in the Geko range.
If customers do not need the deleted periperals and swap to the Tiny range "you will save aproximately 30%", said Førre.
Tinys are sampling in Q3 and, according to Førre, before this code can be developed on equivalent Gekos and the new parts will drop-in when that are available.
Parts with more memory than the original Geko range are on the company roadmap for later in 2010.
At the same time as Tiny Geko, Forre announced a $69 development kit, which includes a 4x40 LCD, J-Link debug interface, touch slider, and an interface for the low power RF parts Energy Micro announced in February.
See: Energy Micro details its ARM Cortex M3-based EFM32G range