Joel Koltner said:
For some markets, sure... but in many commodity items like remote controls it
doesn't make sense to use a $1 32-bit ARM when a $0.10 8-bit PIC still works
just fine.
Yes, but you'll need to sell quite a few units to make up for the
price difference between free GCC and a $$$ toolkit. For high volume
stuff, you're better off slapping an Asic together with some uC core
inside. The 8051 core is probably even cheaper (almost free).
GCC for microcontrollers has never been as good as the best commercial
compilers in code size or performance... and typically "customer support,"
GCC for ARM and MIPS platforms is pretty darn good. Most commercial
compilers will perform less. Just look at some independant
comparisons. The problem with compiler manufacturor's benchmarks is
that they usually compare their product with full optimisations on
against GCC with all optimisations off.
GCC also works fine with most 16 bit controllers (like the Renesas H8
and the TI MSP430 series). Its the oddball controllers like the 8051
and PIC that require a more specific approach towards converting C
into machine language.
Another advantage of using GCC is that you'll have one dialect and one
development environment (for example Eclipse) for all your platforms.
This makes changing to/porting to other/using multiple platforms a lot
easier since you don't have to invest time in learning new tools.
