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Migrating from PIC 8bit to ARM7TDMI & ARM7 cortex-M3 MCU's

akaka

Hi all,

 

First of all I do not want to offend any PIC user(I am too) but my personal opinion is that ARM mcu's are better than the PIC(better than PIC32 too).

I am hearing your experinces, advantages-disadvantages.

  • Hi Chis,

    I think that with the amount of info you're giving this is bound to be a non-discussion. Each device has its own merits and disadvantages. In the old days, a flame war was going between AVR and PIC users, which made more sense than ARM<->PIC, as ARM devices are sold by many manufacturers.

    I've only used PIC devices once, I've used lots of Atmel devices, and now I'm using ARM devices (by ST, NXP and Energy Micro) and Atmel XMEGA. Choosing a manufacturer and device family boils down to the options you have for chip suppliers (maybe a customer demanding manufacturer X?), the peripherals / power features and clock speed you need and the amount of learning time you have if you might switch to a new vendor, and cost. Especially in the ARM vendor jungle, there's no way to pull a good comparison. Just warning....

  • in reply to vsluiter

    Hi Victor,

     

    Thank you for your point. Please forgive me I didn't explain it well.

    Could you imagine 10 years ago what can you make with an ARM? I also agree with you that thw mcu choice depending mainly on your needs and your cost.

    Personaly 10 years ago when I started playing with 16F84&16F628 at the Uni I couldn't imagine it.

    I use ARM of NXP & Energy Micro too.

     

    I think that there are many of us who tried to change family, try something else.

    So my discussion is not for comparing PIC with an ARM but to say anyone some of his own experiences by doing this turn from a PIC to an ARM.

     

    Regards

     

    Chris

  • Now we have so many low cost digitally addressable sensors of all types hasn't the bias of many designs moved from having lots of I/O or  even analog I/O to been able to process that information handed to us in a nice bitstream. A 32 bit M3 is obviously going to be better at this than a 8 bit PIC. To be honest once the square black blob is capable of doing a job isn't it all more about the relative cost of the black blob rather than any other measurement. A 50 cent PIC black blob is more likely to be used than a M3 at say 1$ unless you can add some real value add in to the solution that wasn't in the original specification.