Re: uC selection

On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:14:36 GMT, "Jon Slaughter"
<Jon_Slaughter@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Currently I use microchip pics but I'm looking possibly to switch, but what?
Is Atmel worth it? What about TI? I'm looking for something similar to
microchip but more of a commercial aspect. I have never seen any commercial
device that uses a pic and I assume there are reasons for this? It seems
that pic's are only for hobbiests so using them in a commercial product is a
no-no?

#include <two_cents.h>

I finally got tired of the PIC's paging and banking schemes, not to
mention the single "working register." That said, some apps match up
pretty well with that architecture and it does show up inside many
commercial products, especially white goods -- my outside HVAC unit is
PIC-controlled. You probably have more PICs at home than you realize.

In the 8-bit world, I find the AVRs to be a comfortable architecture,
especially with the deep set of general purpose registers and a nice
instruction set. Handy for home/hobby, also, given that many parts are
still available as 5V and DIP. In-system programmable with an
inexpensive programmer (roll-yer-own is possible).

However, I'd recommend that you take a good look at the ARM family if
you're interested in trying something new. No DIPs, so you'll need a
dev board but fortunately these are available and cheap. Olimex has a
bunch and they're distributed by Sparkfun. ARM cores also support
multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) so, while they're not dedicated DSP
chips, they're not incapable of DSP functionality.

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
.