Even assuming it would be possible to build ram that takes almost no power(which is a scarce resource in many systems), still memory is the biggest tool vendors use today to differentiate prices between chips and to optimize profitability and this fits with product makers since more memory generally means more complex and expensive product.
but we also see a shift towards low-cost chips with lots of memory,for example a new NXP dual-core $2 chip with 108k ram
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What's extra nice about this chip is that it let's you use( in theory ) a garbage collected language ,or even a scripting language in one core and c in another core for your realtime stuff,thus enabling you to mostly write high level code while still having a realtime system.
Looking around, the cheapest I found was $2.62, if you buy a reel of 3000 of them [1]. It's definitely a nice price, but saying something costs two bucks implies maybe up to two and a quarter each, not when it's closer to three.
The LPC54100 series will be available... in the first quarter of 2015, with pricing starting at USD $1.99 in 10K quantities.
If you came from the future to inform us that NXP lied about their chips costing $1.99 in 10K quantities in 2015, then your beef is with the NXP marketing department, not minthd.
minthd is just relaying a number he read in a news article, which in turn relayed it from a NXP press release.
I completely missed that in my reading over the article, which was why I ended up searching for and linking to an aggregator that shows retail pricing.
but we also see a shift towards low-cost chips with lots of memory,for example a new NXP dual-core $2 chip with 108k ram .
What's extra nice about this chip is that it let's you use( in theory ) a garbage collected language ,or even a scripting language in one core and c in another core for your realtime stuff,thus enabling you to mostly write high level code while still having a realtime system.