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pmalta
Luis Sanchez
This article was more amusing that I’d expected. Murphy’s Law applied to code ...
Selecting 8-bit MCUs: A practical guide
Steve Terry
11/21/2011 12:44 PM EST
Many devices may be available that will do the job, but tailoring the selection tightly to your particular needs can make for a much smoother ride in the long run.
Many small board designs benefit nicely from the use of a microcontroller. But selecting an appropriate one for a particular design often brings on the feeling of "Where do I begin?"
This discussion limits its focus to low-end microcontrollers. For this purpose, we'll stick with 8-bit devices. 8 bits simply means that internal processing only operates on 8 bits at a time. As one would expect, 16- and 32-bit micros would operate much faster as they are processing more bits of data with each instruction.
To be sure, much of the same thinking applied to 8-bit microcontrollers can be applied to 16- and 32-bit devices; however, cost, size, capabilities, performance, feature integration, and a host of other upscaled attributes quickly make it increasingly difficult to generalize on approach and applicability.
That said, even in the 8-bit microcontroller world, there are many highly specialized devices. So, to avoid confusion, we'll leave that subject for a future discussion and stay with the garden variety parts for now. Quite often, if your design truly calls for one of these specialized micros, there's not going to be much choice, and you'll likely be familiar with those choices already, so you should be okay.
Read the full article on EDN.
Steve Terry is with SK Communications (and advisor to Component Engineering Consultants)
Many small board designs benefit nicely from the use of a microcontroller. But selecting an appropriate one for a particular design often brings on the feeling of "Where do I begin?"
This discussion limits its focus to low-end microcontrollers. For this purpose, we'll stick with 8-bit devices. 8 bits simply means that internal processing only operates on 8 bits at a time. As one would expect, 16- and 32-bit micros would operate much faster as they are processing more bits of data with each instruction.
To be sure, much of the same thinking applied to 8-bit microcontrollers can be applied to 16- and 32-bit devices; however, cost, size, capabilities, performance, feature integration, and a host of other upscaled attributes quickly make it increasingly difficult to generalize on approach and applicability.
That said, even in the 8-bit microcontroller world, there are many highly specialized devices. So, to avoid confusion, we'll leave that subject for a future discussion and stay with the garden variety parts for now. Quite often, if your design truly calls for one of these specialized micros, there's not going to be much choice, and you'll likely be familiar with those choices already, so you should be okay.
Read the full article on EDN.
Steve Terry is with SK Communications (and advisor to Component Engineering Consultants)
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Sheetal.Pandey
11/22/2011 5:16 AM EST
Read the artcile. short and crisp..
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Sanjib.Acharya
11/22/2011 1:15 PM EST
This article provides a handy checklist to help the electronics design engineers (especially the beginners) in selecting the most suitable 8-bit microcontroller for their applications.
I have experienced that most of the time it starts with: "let's see what development tool we have"...or..."What was the microcontroller used in the last design?" :)
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Sanjib.Acharya
11/22/2011 1:17 PM EST
This article provides a handy checklist to help the electronics design engineers (especially the beginners) in selecting the most suitable 8-bit microcontroller for their applications.
I have experienced that most of the time it starts with: "let's see what development tool we have"...or..."What was the microcontroller used in the last design?" :)
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Luis Sanchez
11/30/2011 2:57 PM EST
This article was more amusing that I’d expected. Murphy’s Law applied to code size! Ja! Very good to know now that in the 8 bit MCU world there are the big 3, Atmel, Microchip and Renesas.
With all the range of devices offered by these manufacturers is of a good aid to have their web-pages provide some sort of filter and search matrix.
What I will have to research a little is that about the MSP430… 16 bit core with all the benefits of an 8 bit? How is that? That MSP430 from TI is blowing a lot of whistles lately.
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pmalta
12/27/2011 6:18 PM EST
The article could guive more details and methodology.
By the way Freescale has a web selector that you can use to configure the desired processor.
Microchip has an even more powerfull tool called MAPS (Microchip Advanced Parts Selector) that can be used on-line or downloaded to your computer.
Should be given more details on free libraries that MCU manufacturers offer. In this point TI, Microchip and Freescale are the best
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