and Ian i like PICs ! lots of mips for the buck and more and more on board stuff everyday
Dennis,
I know I am baiting a lot of people. I have used PICs a lot. But since working with MSP430s and, at the higher end, the Mitsubishi M16C I am not sure I see where PIC fit anymore, there is cheaper available elsewhere with higher performance or lower power. Having to pump in four clocks for each instruction is pretty archaic and directly affects power consumption. The PIC16 series is still a 200ns instruction cycle for a 20 MHz clock. The MSP430 will do 125ns at 8 MHz at lower power - though the code density of the PIC may be better in some cases due to the way it combines instructions and data in most instructions. The MSP, at the bottom end, is also cheaper.
The AVR series are also pushing on well - again due to the general one clock one instruction nature of the core power consumption can be made lower.
I am actually being pretty hard on PICs, there may well be times in the future I use them again, but they are no longer my first choice for really limited applications - were they have traditionally shined. The addition of the DSP functions is interesting, but pricing here is not great. The architecture is oldish now, (I think it was General Instruments) in the 80's that developed the basic architecture). I really am not keen on the banked architecture.
My opinions only and in my comments on PICs I know I am throwing grenades. Much of it is joking.
Bye for now, Ian
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