It is true that several other MCU brands offer analog perfs with higher
resolution or sampling speed. It is also true some of them have serious bugs
and do not meet their specs. I just did 5 designs in the last few months with
various MCUs from several other brands, and several have ADCs or DACs that were
claimed to be 12b, but vary from 4-10 bits of useable resolution. Sample rates
that only work at 1/10 the speed they claimed without severe problems.
One manuf has parts out with great specs and perfs, that's why I designed
it in. Only to find out the errata is 33 pages and that does not begin to cover
all the problems. Comparators that were unusable, ADC glitches, DACs not
working right, etc. Turns out these problems have been documented for over 2
years. When are they going to fix the parts? Beats me.
I've seen a lot of MCUs lately that have major silicon bugs. Some of the
semi company's have had major cuts in staff and engr depts. Frankly, I
think a lot of parts are now being released half-baked. They are pushing them
out the door with a lot more known problems than in the past. And it's
anybody's guess when they will fix the problems.
In the last couple years I've done designs with MCUs from Atmel (XMEGA),
SiLabs(F043), Microchip(dsPIC33), ADI(ADUC7021), and a lot of designs with
Philips/NXP(2104/2148/2132/2468). Bottom line: The NXP parts had the least
amount of problems by far, and the best features. Several of the others were
unuseable.
All ARM7 are not created equal. ADI has some great analog perfs in their
ADUC70XX series. But even while a part like the ADUC70XX series is an ARM7, it
does not have the features that NXP put in their ARM7. For example: no vectored
INT handler, INTs do not have edge detection only level, PWM section is a
nightmare very difficult to get outputs the way you want, timers are crude
compared to the rich timer features in LPCs, and LPCs have far greater PIN
functionality.
I have not used any of the NXP Cortex yet. I like my JTAG debugger
hardware/software and SWD not compatible yet. But based on my experience, I
would pick an LPC2000 over just about any other MCU I have ever used in a
heartbeat. Love um.
Chris.