7 Jan
2006
7 Jan
'06
3:34 a.m.
So old core processors tend become embedded (pun
intended) within companies.
It takes a significant new bauble to break through. The last major change I
saw in embedded processors was the ARM chip sets. They were slow to get
accepted but now are everywhere. Probably another 10-15 years of life
there. And of course the PIC devices are so cheap that they HAD to be
utilized. I don't see anything out there now that would be so superior as
to be worth the cost of change.
Why do you say PIC devices are cheap? I find them expensive, as many
other companies make more advanced devices costing less.
Currently I'm hooked to Philips' LPC family of ARM controllers(I even
won a price with a design contest for this family very recently). You
can have 64K flash, 16K ram, an ARM7 core, 2 uarts and many other nice
peripherals for less then five dollar in very low quantities. In 100k
quantities they only cost slightly more then 2 dollars. If you compare
that price/performance ratio to Microchips portfolio I think you must
aggree that they by no means can compete with that.
Oh yeah, you don't need to buy any tools to get the LPC213x family to
work. They come with build-in ROM code that can program the flash memory
over a serial port. Fully documented, but an easy-to-use windows program
can be downloaded for free from the web. You can either use the free GNU
ARM toolchain or buy one of the commercial ones.
Bert