I'm not really an embedded engineer, just getting my degree in EE and doing hobby projects with embedded. For one particular project I've been using a number for different BLE microcontrollers to see what works best. Started out with the ESP32 where I got everything running pretty quickly but the current consumption was about 10x as high as I wanted it to be. Then made a design with an STM32 and at first I liked the IDE and the documentation, but I sort of ran a ground and also disliked how incredibly expensive this particular microcontroller was. Now on my desk I have one which I think is the cheapest BLE microcontrollers from Silicon labs. EFR22BG22CC something. Neat little thing in a QFN-32 package, a simple hardware design and a lot cheaper than the STM32. The IDE seems pretty simple and I think that most of their tooling is open source since there is also an implementation for it in visual studio code. Documentation isn't as great, but I can get by. And also, despite the wide range of microcontrollers they offer, they do seem to be available in large quantities. The one I used mouser had like 350k of and more on the way.
I've yet to see anyone here talk about silicon labs microcontrollers. Why's that?