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Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone trying making IOT type devices in geopolitically stable places (in so far as there are any). Espressif seems like a pretty clear leader right now, but perhaps that is only from a hobbyists perspective? If bad things happened we would have bigger problems then wifi enabled toothbrushes, but it seems like a niche someone should make more robust and diverse.

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Future US made IOT devices will mostly be ARM Cortex M33 and M0+ microcontrollers. They have the latest cryptography and safety features built-in and nice libraries. It's surprisingly difficult to find out what fabs build them. Maybe someone here can chime in?

Those things mostly don't have built in wifi which is annoying, because then you need a separate chip for the wifi. Atmel is the exception, arduino even makes a dev board with it, but it is $35 vs $8 for a esp32 devboard.

Can't IoT devices be made on older fab's like the 32/40nm and up fab's available in for instance Germany (GloFo)? There are more of them in other more-or-less stable regions.

Of course, but I imagine Intel's spare 14nm+++++++++++ capacity is pretty significant at the moment, which is best in class (non-TSMC division).

Shouldn't IoT be most sensitive for power consumption?

Usually more sensitive to price I think? Many IOT devices plug into wall outlets. For those that don't, I would expect the wireless capability to dwarf the power consumption of the chip itself, but it seems like newer fabs would definitely be a good thing.

Yeah. Depends on a lot, but only small independent things really care about power. For the rest, put a bigger battery on it or plug it in... and nearly the entire consumer market for IOT can just plug it in.

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