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Microchip is known for supporting their chips for longer than most. They basically keep making them as long as there's demand. And the Dx series is pretty recen

Microchip is known for supporting their chips for longer than most. They basically keep making them as long as there's demand. And the Dx series is pretty recent. That they're flirting with a Cortex-M0 pathway probably suggests they don't want to keep developing another generation of 8-bit platforms after the Dx series. If they bring the same features to another CPU core, I guess that's fine.

dragontamer 5mo ago
If Silicon Labs BusyBee (8051 core. You heard me right: freaking 8051) actually ends up as the final 8-bitter so help me I'll need to punch the chip gods in their face. That being said: AVR Ex series still has features that the PIC32 CM cannot do. I wouldn't say that the AVR is dead yet. But Microchip is beginning to hedge their bets. So we should keep an eye on future developments. And 1.8V operation across the board still solidifies the AVR as the low power king (or at least, tied with the PIC series). Even if it's now sharing its 5V crown with another chip. I guess 5V always made more sense for the bigger and (slightly) less efficient 32-bitters.
- butvacuum 5mo ago
  isn't AVR vs PIC semantics since microchip bought atmel?
  - brucehoult 5mo ago
    AVR is vastly better to program than 8 bit PIC — either by hand or by compiler from C — but some people still insist on using those PICs for simple things. The "PIC32" name was originally used for MIPS CPUs but more recently ARM ones and PIC32A is an extended dsPIC (16 bit). There is also now PIC64 which is currently a couple of different RISC-V implementations, one based on quad core SiFive U54 from 2018 (same as PolarFire SoC FPGAS), and higher performance (and rad-tolerant in some versions) octa-core SiFive X280 with vector processing. Microchip have I think also indicated there will be future Arm-based 64 bit PICs.
    - dragontamer 5mo ago
      The PIC and AVR are both more about peripherals (and low power, since they can sleep while peripherals do things). The documentation on PIC or AVR assembly is extremely short, less than 200 pages. But the chips other peripherals (MVIO, 50mA push/pull current at upto 5V, OpAmps, differential ADCs, Event systems, and more) is where these chips get a resounding advantage. Except now PIC32 CM has those very nice peripherals (comparable to AVR DD at least). It's very curious to me how it all works out: if Microchip will continue porting their nice hardware to ARM, or if they'll continue to develop new stuff for the 8bit market. ---------- Because the peripherals are hardware, I don't think it's really too valuable looking at the assembly language or other comp-sci details. The 8-bit assembly languages, be it PIC or AVR (or 8051) are all sufficient. Enough CPU to do things and glue the peripherals together.
- RobotToaster 5mo ago
  The 8051 is eternal, it will probably outlive x86 and ARM.
  - ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
    We humans will be cleansed from the Earth in nuclear fire, and in ten thousand years the cockroaches that survive and evolve and repopulate will be running their desktops on 4GHz die-shrinks of 8051.
- sitzkrieg 5mo ago
  silabs efm8 series is great (and fast lil buggers)

dragontamer 5mo ago

If Silicon Labs BusyBee (8051 core. You heard me right: freaking 8051) actually ends up as the final 8-bitter so help me I'll need to punch the chip gods in their face. That being said: AVR Ex series still has features that the PIC32 CM cannot do. I wouldn't say that the AVR is dead yet. But Microchip is beginning to hedge their bets. So we should keep an eye on future developments. And 1.8V operation across the board still solidifies the AVR as the low power king (or at least, tied with the PIC series). Even if it's now sharing its 5V crown with another chip. I guess 5V always made more sense for the bigger and (slightly) less efficient 32-bitters.

butvacuum 5mo ago
isn't AVR vs PIC semantics since microchip bought atmel?
- brucehoult 5mo ago
  AVR is vastly better to program than 8 bit PIC — either by hand or by compiler from C — but some people still insist on using those PICs for simple things. The "PIC32" name was originally used for MIPS CPUs but more recently ARM ones and PIC32A is an extended dsPIC (16 bit). There is also now PIC64 which is currently a couple of different RISC-V implementations, one based on quad core SiFive U54 from 2018 (same as PolarFire SoC FPGAS), and higher performance (and rad-tolerant in some versions) octa-core SiFive X280 with vector processing. Microchip have I think also indicated there will be future Arm-based 64 bit PICs.
  - dragontamer 5mo ago
    The PIC and AVR are both more about peripherals (and low power, since they can sleep while peripherals do things). The documentation on PIC or AVR assembly is extremely short, less than 200 pages. But the chips other peripherals (MVIO, 50mA push/pull current at upto 5V, OpAmps, differential ADCs, Event systems, and more) is where these chips get a resounding advantage. Except now PIC32 CM has those very nice peripherals (comparable to AVR DD at least). It's very curious to me how it all works out: if Microchip will continue porting their nice hardware to ARM, or if they'll continue to develop new stuff for the 8bit market. ---------- Because the peripherals are hardware, I don't think it's really too valuable looking at the assembly language or other comp-sci details. The 8-bit assembly languages, be it PIC or AVR (or 8051) are all sufficient. Enough CPU to do things and glue the peripherals together.
RobotToaster 5mo ago
The 8051 is eternal, it will probably outlive x86 and ARM.
- ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
  We humans will be cleansed from the Earth in nuclear fire, and in ten thousand years the cockroaches that survive and evolve and repopulate will be running their desktops on 4GHz die-shrinks of 8051.
sitzkrieg 5mo ago
silabs efm8 series is great (and fast lil buggers)