The RP2040 itself 'only costs $1' without the flash chip it needs. Then what if you need an analog comparator? Another chip. Now what if you want a medium current PWM output? Another chip. AVRxt can output as much current on a single pin as an RP2040 can through its entire package. The two are simply not competing in the same space. AVR isn't strong in computation but is a great general purpose brain for many simple real world interfacing machines.
Given that's the case, do you have an explanation for Microchip's development of numerous new AVR product lines since their acquisition of Atmel in 2016?
Comfort and familiarity. They’re comfortable chips you can learn inside and out with a fairly huge ecosystem (importantly one that is approachable because it’s also powered by people in a similar position and with similar priorities/concerns to your own) around the parts/arch/IS and you don’t have to read scary looking 600-page datasheets (then realize there’s a separate datasheet for the core vs the rest), worry about soldering TQFN or TFBGA packages with your (t)rusty old Weller iron, don’t need to learn the distinction between the Cortex Core and the manufacturer-specific everything else around it, worry about things like initializing timers and peripheral buses, concern yourself too much with power states, etc. If the chip can’t do DMA and can’t do hardware-accelerated x, y, or z, it takes a lot of pressure off of things when it comes to nerd-sniping yourself into doing something in a better way or even just deciding “this isn’t possible, might need to pick a different approach/problem/solution altogether.”
If a bank wants 'someone else' to have $10, such as a customer at an ATM or a different bank, they indeed must hand them literal cash or 'wire' them $10 of reserves.
Banks, through 'loans', don't create cash or reserves, they create local bank deposits. One flows freely around, the other is confined to a particular institution.
You are able to do almost exactly what a bank does: My holding a $50 IOU issued by you is like having a $50 balance in a chequing account. The only way I can 'transfer' that to someone else is either (1) having you give me literal cash that I can give them, or (2) forfeiting my IOU and having you generate one for someone else.
(1) Works because cash is universally accepted.
(2) Only works when the other party is part of your IOU club. Translated to the world of banking: they are a member of the same bank!
I think I get it now. The bank is able to "create" money because it is, in some sense, the sovereign issuer of its own internal "IOU" currency. It makes IOUs (deposit records) to track who has the right to draw currency from it, and it can create as many of these IOUs as it wants for any reason. And if you classify bank deposits as money, these IOUs count as money.
You've got it. They certainly don't create these IOUs for -any- reason (I'd wager there's legislation that strictly governs this.) In practice deposits (customer assets/bank liabilities) are created simultaneous to the customer handing over an asset of equal value: their promise to pay down the debt, such that the books balance.
A side note to think about: Although the memes might have you believe that 'money' is being 'printed' by the bank, in actuality the true creation is happening on the side of the customer whom, from nothing, manifests an asset into the world: their promise to pay. Intentional or otherwise the system obfuscates this fact.
Thank you, this is great. I am still a bit mystified for murky reasons I may be able to articulate better later... but feel much closer to understanding this than before :)
Makes sense but is completely wrong. A bank can credit customers with any size deposits at any time, though in reality they will only do so with an equal sized debit, and within the confines of regulation.
I think much confusion comes from association with the word 'loan'. In reality, a bank 'loan' is actually an extension of credit.
You are indeed 'magically' credited, in an instant, with say $100 of new deposits which is a liability to the bank. Simultaneously the bank gains an asset: your signed promise to pay that $100 or otherwise forfeit equivalent collateral.
A key point here is that this new 'magical' deposit is not the same stuff as cash or reserves. It is confined to that particular institution. Nothing that is being 'magically' created can escape the bank. Only cash and reserves can do that.
Ok, but if the credit is say a mortgage for a property being bought, the seller still receives the money in full, no? I guess the idea that they fully cash it out is unlikely and so that scenario would indeed come from the reserve - and otherwise if they just deposit it, even if at another bank, then it's just updating some ledgers around (i.e. the ledgers of the two banks with each other)?
The only ledger that two different banks share is the ledger of reserves at the central bank. The bank deposit that is created through the mortgage process has no means of escaping the buyer's bank and into the seller's account -- it's an artifact of the contract between the buyer and their bank. The seller's account grows only in response to a bank-to-bank transfer of reserves or a huge cash withdrawal and deposit (which are essentially similar.)
