Re: Learning to use PICS

From: Sergio Masci (sergio_at_NO.SPAM.xcprod.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 01:25:19 -0000

Byron A Jeff <byron@cc.gatech.edu> wrote in message
news:coi37q$4t6@cleon.cc.gatech.edu...
> In article <41AB98C1.8000002@netscape.net>, mike <spamme0@netscape.net>
wrote:
> -David Harper wrote:
> -> All,
> -> [Dave's questions about banking snipped.]
> -
> -If your objective is to understand the architecture of a 16F84, you're
> -on the right track to understanding an obsolete and arcane part.
> -There's only one reason to use paged/baanked memory...Price! And that
> -advantage has long since been nullified by technological advances.
>
> That's not true. The PIC has a legitimate reason for having a banked
memory
> architecture. It facilitates a uniform instruction set where virtually
every
> instruction executes in one instruction cycle.

I agree. It makes the programmers job a little harder but it also frees him
to move the extra time overhead to a less critical part of the code. And if
you use sophisticated tools like the XCASM assembler (it can analyse the
code and insert the banking and paging instructions for you in an optimised
way) your only real problem is large arrays that wont fit in a single bank,
but you will always be able to find a problem with any MCU if you look hard
enough :-)

Regards
Sergio Masci

http://www.xcprod.com/titan/XCSB - optimising PIC compiler
FREE for personal non-commercial use

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