Re: Datasheet-flation?

On 11/23/2024 12:05 PM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:

Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

The data "sheet" for the new processor I'm using is ~16,000 pages.
(note carefully the position of the comma separator)

 In my country people would ask why are you putting decimal
comma in a number that is supposed to be an integer?

I18N/L10N.  In the US, there are many conventions for the presentation
of numeric values.
Magnitudes greater thatn 10^3 *can* be separated into triads of
digits (right justified) using the comma as a separator.
1,000; 1,000,000; 1,000,000,000; etc.  For four digit values,
the separator is often omitted.
Years, in dates, are never represented with a comma:  2024, 1999, etc.
Numeric street addresses are also not so punctuated.  2981, 10322, etc.
(additionally, street addresses are referenced as "hundreds" -- the
last of those would be spoken as "hundred and three hundred")

This is getting ridiculous.  I thought 2,000 page datasheets were
over the top, but this one is a personal record!  <frown>

 Size depends on complexity of the processor, on what is included
(Chinese makers tends to have short datasheets which frequently
skip useful information) and style of presentation.

Of course!  The datasheet typcially only deals with hardware related issues
and, possibly, a coarse overview of the programmer's model -- but no
documentation of the instruction set, or instruction timing, etc.

I recently feched
Intel datasheet giving essentually the instruction set, it is
more than 5000 pages.

Yes.  The programmer's reference (for the main cores), FPU, MMU, crypto
processor and the "support processors" are handled in other documents.
As I said, the datasheet just describes the HARDWARE.  (though the actual
pin descriptions -- 400+ -- are described elsewhere, electrically.

 Several STM datasheet for relatively simple
processors have more than 1000 pages.

There are 12,000+ pages describing the registers in the device.

 Some STM datasheets contain
a lot of examples in C, that adds bulk.  STM has general timer
design which can be specialized to remove various features.
Instead of describing general design and then specifying features
of each timer they have separate section for each compbination
of features present in a timer.  This leads to significant
duplication, where bulk of a section is the same as section
for another timer, but some places differ.

Yes.  The "core specific" registers are repeated four times
(as there are a set for each core).  While this is a
relatively straightforward way of presenting the material,
it leaves you wondering if there is some SUBTLE difference
in the descriptions that may prove significant:  "I'd better
verify they are truly identical!"

IIRC have a datasheet with about 5000 pages.  16000 pages would
be reasonable if the processor contains a lot of features
and they want to describe it in depth.

No.  This just enumerates lots of details.  LOTS of tables.
Tables that span 10 or 20 pages!  The days of the "M6800
Programming Reference Manual" that laid out complete applications
(because such devices were relatively new) are gone.

 Or could be just
mistuned text-generator which is spitting text based on some
templates and a database.

With ARM products, documentation often seems to be "documentation
modules" that are slapped together.  And, as the documentation
also serves to explain the devices to their licensees, it can
often seem like they aren't talking about a real device but,
rather, abstract silicon.