uC selection

[JosephKK]

Some of their tools are licensed under the GPL.

That could explain some of the PIC popularity, free tools. That is
starting to become common, but GPL tools are not so common.

 

[JosephKK]

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Sure if the chips suit.


Again, sure if the chips suit the job.


Oh, there's plenty of commercial use for them! The Dell laptop I have
recently disassembled used a PIC for the mouse pad. You'd probably find
them in all kinds of appliances (dishwashers, tumble driers, etc.) if you
took some of those apart.


Why wouldn't you? If the chip performs the function and the price is
right, what is there to loose?

Amplifying, you do not get sales volumes in the billions on only
hobbyist applications.

 

[Rich Grise]

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?

Use a CPLD or FPGA with the VHDL or Verilog uP core of your choice. I like
the6502 a lot. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

.

The only reason I'm using pic's now is cause of how easy was to get
started and the majority of it was free/low cost(tools, chips,
programmer, etc...).

If it works, why fix it? (notwithstanding bank switching is Evil.) ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Not sure how 32 bits helps much for the typical uC application.

What do you need more speed than a 33/40 MHz 8051 for anyway ?

Sometimes even 8 are overkill:
http://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf/2256180.pdf
;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[krw]

I'm betting you're a man who programs in assembly!

Dunno about Rich, but I am (VHDL and FPGAs too .

(The 6502 is a pretty lousy target for a C compiler...)

Speaking of the 8051...

 

[Rich Grise]

I'm betting you're a man who programs in assembly!

Absolutely!

(The 6502 is a pretty lousy target for a C compiler...)

Well, true, but I like the orthogonality of its architecture, and its
fairly "simple" instruction set. I made a dandy keyboard controller with
"n-key" rollover out of one once.

Cheers!
Rich