Many semiconductor vendors including TI, NXP, STMicroelectronics, Microchip, and others play in the microcontroller market. As with nearly every semiconductor niche, microcontrollers have been getting bigger and badder for decades. In the 1970s, there were 4-bit microcontrollers for VCRs and other simple consumer electronics. There were scads of 8-bit microcontrollers, soon followed by 16-bit microcontrollers.…