Tom Ormiston wrote:
From what I can see, the new part has the same voltage supply range as the other Encore family parts - 1.8-3.6v.

Shame - That's a brave call - coming late to a party, with a Niche core.. What IS the point of difference then ?
I would have expected IXYS influence, to be more industrial/automotive use focused ?

Why would someone choose 2013 Encore ReMix, over something like
www.renesas.com/press/news/2012/news20121113_s.jsp

Shows Wide Vcc, USB, and low price of ~ $1/10K

or any of these ?
www.nuvoton.com/NuvotonMOSS/Community/Pr...e1-91c9-063449500ce7

The differences really are the features required for a particular application.
There are many features included to support extremely low power usage, peripherals and versatile event handling options. The part has many features that were generated by customer’s requests. Once the product is announced, we can talk about the specifics of the features and how/why someone would want them.
The parts you mention are 32bit and 16bit parts where this is still an 8bit part.

Looking for the WiFi version - which nobody seems to have.

I mean for ZDots. None anywhere. I called DK and they say it is obsolete.

I see one ZGate dev kit anywhere, unless there is a different part number for that? I called DK, and they say it is obsolete??

Suggestions: the industrial products we provide are in a 5V, -40°~ +85° or +105°C world. So wide VCC is definitely a good idea. Or at LEAST make the inputs 5V tolerant (and don't make the same mistake like on the ez80 where the pins really aren't 5v tolerant)

And if you guys are still in the industrial game, please make the dev kits with -40°C parts - we do a lot of testing in the snow and ice. That would be really helpful.

Zilog’s Zdots were a module approach used to show a complete integrated solution. Typically these were good candidate for TTM (fast time to market endeavors). Zilog has since moved more into the Reference Designs model to help enable this process, knowing that many customers can build their own modules that are better suited to their specific applications. Zilog still supports the existing ZDOTS we created but does not plan to market new ZDOTS branded products moving forward.

That particular ZDot was discontinued due to multiple reasons, including obsolesces in some of the parts used (specifically, the RTL8711). We are investigating other options for the module although not as a ZDot but as a reference design or external produced module.

There is only one development kit for the ZGate. It is not obsolete, although there may not be any inventory yet. The production run for the development kit is in process. Inventory should be there shortly.