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I love the AVRs, they are nice and simple Harvard architecture 8-bit microcontrollers, but I think, for any new project the ARM Cortex series (M0, M3, M4) are j

I love the AVRs, they are nice and simple Harvard architecture 8-bit microcontrollers, but I think, for any new project the ARM Cortex series (M0, M3, M4) are just a better option, they are 32-bit, are faster, have more RAM, more Flash, you can get DSP and other nice features, and they are cheap.

HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
Any new project? I just made a product for a client that had to fit inside a shoe and be as physically unobtrusive as possible while stealing power from another device. It only needed one bit of input and one bit of output and the code fit into an 8-pin Tiny AVR and was probably just about a kilobyte of compiled C. The chip cost less than $1 in single units. ARMs are nice and everything, but orders of magnitude overkill for the thousands of small devices like this.
- Zuph 13y ago
  The "any new project" generality is getting closer to an absolute truth every day. Many Cortex chips use much less power than an AtMega or AtTiny in sleep modes, and use very little power in active modes. All are fast enough that they can spend the majority of their time in deep sleep modes. NXP is making significant inroads in producing low pin-count devices, and there are many chips available for under $2.50 in single quantities. I mean, at the end of the day, the tool you know is the tool you should use, but it's more difficult to quibble about the technicalities of it all the time. I would argue that the biggest barrier to Cortex M0/M3/M4 adoption in the hobbyist/maker/startup community is the lack of coherent open tool chains. Many of the cheap programmers will only program a subset of chips, many pre-canned compilers don't include various features (Many lack support for the M0+, or the FPU on the M4F chips), it's almost impossible to get code working on a chip without delving into a vicious hellscape of linker scripts, and many manufacturers license their peripheral libraries under onerous non-free/non-open licenses. I could program an AVR with one hand tied behind my back using an entirely open toolchain. Until I can do that with even a single manufacturer's Cortex Mx offerings, the AtTinys and AtMegas will be sticking around. I want to work on my project damn it, not debugging my toolchain.

HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago

Any new project? I just made a product for a client that had to fit inside a shoe and be as physically unobtrusive as possible while stealing power from another device. It only needed one bit of input and one bit of output and the code fit into an 8-pin Tiny AVR and was probably just about a kilobyte of compiled C. The chip cost less than $1 in single units. ARMs are nice and everything, but orders of magnitude overkill for the thousands of small devices like this.

Zuph 13y ago
The "any new project" generality is getting closer to an absolute truth every day. Many Cortex chips use much less power than an AtMega or AtTiny in sleep modes, and use very little power in active modes. All are fast enough that they can spend the majority of their time in deep sleep modes. NXP is making significant inroads in producing low pin-count devices, and there are many chips available for under $2.50 in single quantities. I mean, at the end of the day, the tool you know is the tool you should use, but it's more difficult to quibble about the technicalities of it all the time. I would argue that the biggest barrier to Cortex M0/M3/M4 adoption in the hobbyist/maker/startup community is the lack of coherent open tool chains. Many of the cheap programmers will only program a subset of chips, many pre-canned compilers don't include various features (Many lack support for the M0+, or the FPU on the M4F chips), it's almost impossible to get code working on a chip without delving into a vicious hellscape of linker scripts, and many manufacturers license their peripheral libraries under onerous non-free/non-open licenses. I could program an AVR with one hand tied behind my back using an entirely open toolchain. Until I can do that with even a single manufacturer's Cortex Mx offerings, the AtTinys and AtMegas will be sticking around. I want to work on my project damn it, not debugging my toolchain.