Hi-Tech Software bought by Microchip - no more other compilers

Does anybody know what has happened to their old compilers e.g. H8/300
or Z180?

Is somebody buying the rights to these products?
x----------x

Op Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:05:39 +0200 schreef <nobody@nowhere.com>:
> Does anybody know what has happened to their old compilers e.g. H8/300
> or Z180?
>
> Is somebody buying the rights to these products?

Very small market I guess.  IAR has EOLed H8/300 two years ago, and even  
then they never released a GUI version for it.


-- 
Gemaakt met Opera's revolutionaire e-mailprogramma:  
http://www.opera.com/mail/

nobody@nowhere.com wrote:
> Does anybody know what has happened to their old compilers e.g. H8/300
> or Z180?

They binned them, as to be expected.

> Is somebody buying the rights to these products?

Unlikely, as they would probably include common code that is part of the PIC 
compiler which Microchip want to keep for themselves.

Dave.
-- 
---------------------------------------------
Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast:
http://www.alternatezone.com/eevblog/ 

On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 22:01:49 +1000, "David L. Jones"
<altzone@gmail.com> wrote:

>nobody@nowhere.com wrote:
>> Does anybody know what has happened to their old compilers e.g. H8/300
>> or Z180?
>
>They binned them, as to be expected.
>
>> Is somebody buying the rights to these products?
>
>Unlikely, as they would probably include common code that is part of the PIC 
>compiler which Microchip want to keep for themselves.
>
>Dave.

Its interesting this. Is microchip going to release the compiler free
of charge? Atmel uses gcc, so it must be getting some good market
share on that aspect alone. I recently did some work on the AP7000
running linux, and whilst I hate linux its clear that Atmel has done a
lot of work to make it all free. Gcc is pretty good, can microchip
beat it?

 The Real Andy <therealandy@nospam.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 22:01:49 +1000, "David L. Jones"
><altzone@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>nobody@nowhere.com wrote:
>>> Does anybody know what has happened to their old compilers e.g. H8/300
>>> or Z180?
>>
>>They binned them, as to be expected.
>>
>>> Is somebody buying the rights to these products?
>>
>>Unlikely, as they would probably include common code that is part of the PIC 
>>compiler which Microchip want to keep for themselves.
>>
>>Dave.
>
>Its interesting this. Is microchip going to release the compiler free
>of charge? Atmel uses gcc, so it must be getting some good market
>share on that aspect alone. I recently did some work on the AP7000
>running linux, and whilst I hate linux its clear that Atmel has done a
>lot of work to make it all free. Gcc is pretty good, can microchip
>beat it?

The GNU tools have been around for years for the H8/300 too, but were
pretty rough - as one would expect for a) a generic compiler without
many or any CPU specific optimisations and b) a tool used only by a
relatively small number of people and "supported" (not) by that
arrogant company called Hitachi. The IAR compiler was a lot better (I
used it for the H8/500 series) and the Hitech one was at least as
good.

How good is the GNU compiler these days? I see the last updates were
about 2002, and there is even a windoze build of it somewhere.

I have moved to Atmel for all new products.

x----------x

On Jul 8, 12:32=A0pm, The Real Andy <thereala...@nospam.com> wrote:
> ...
> Its interesting this. Is microchip going to release the compiler free
> of charge? Atmel uses gcc, so it must be getting some good market
> share on that aspect alone. I recently did some work on the AP7000
> running linux, and whilst I hate linux its clear that Atmel has done a
> lot of work to make it all free. Gcc is pretty good, can microchip
> beat it?

Their 32-bit parts are MIPS based, which should be GNU covered
OK - so I guess they won't try to beat it. My guess is they will
want to make some "point and click" kind of thing for those who
find "normal" programming as we know it (command line, text
editing etc. "very difficult" things) too complex a task...
 The bad news is if they do so they will likely get hugely
popular (being already more popular than they should be to my
taste, many people nowadays thing "PIC" is just a synonym of
"MCU" ).

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff               Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/sets/72157600228621276/

> =A0The bad news is if they do so they will likely get hugely
> popular (being already more popular than they should be to my
> taste, many people nowadays thing "PIC" is just a synonym of
> "MCU" ).

Microchip's compiler support is terribly fragmented though now.

- PIC10/12/14/16 covered by third-party compilers only. Since uChip
now owns Hitech, I guess this has changed, technically.
- PIC18 is covered Microchip C18 (proprietary?). Free non-optimizing
version.
- PIC24/dsPIC is covered by Microchip C30 (gcc based). Free non-
optimizing version.
- PIC32 is MIPS, so gcc.

Last week I did a quick-n-dirty consulting job for which I chose a PIC
as it was the only micro with USB and sufficient I/O AND DIP package
that I had on hand; rapid hand prototyping was the key here. In the
process I got reacquainted with MPLAB and the horrible ergonomics of
Microchip's tools... argh! And the fun stuff in the architecture, like
ROM tables (const rom char [] =3D { x,y,...} ) that can't exceed a
certain size but don't generate any compiler warnings or errors....
yuck.

On 2009-07-08, nobody@nowhere.com <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

> The GNU tools have been around for years for the H8/300 too,
> but were pretty rough - as one would expect for a) a generic
> compiler without many or any CPU specific optimisations and b)
> a tool used only by a relatively small number of people and
> "supported" (not) by that arrogant company called Hitachi. The
> IAR compiler was a lot better (I used it for the H8/500
> series) and the Hitech one was at least as good.
>
> How good is the GNU compiler these days? I see the last
> updates were about 2002, and there is even a windoze build of
> it somewhere.

The last update to the H8 toolchain was June 10, 2009:

  http://www.kpitgnutools.com/releaseNotes.php

I've never tried the KPIT Gnu Eclipse IDE, but the toolchain
sources maintained by KPIT have always been very solid and
current.
  
-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I want the presidency
                                  at               so bad I can already taste
                               visi.com            the hors d'oeuvres.

The Real Andy wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 22:01:49 +1000, "David L. Jones"

> Its interesting this. Is microchip going to release the compiler free
> of charge? 

They release the "demo" version of the compiler free, without a time 
limit or (as I recall) any limits except that optimizations are turned off.

Having optimizations turned off is pretty bad -- the code frequently 
bank-switches to the memory bank it is already in, for instance.  So the 
un-optimized compiler is good for learning C and testing algorithms, but 
its output is rather bloated.

I seem to recall they want over $1000 for the optimizing version of the 
compiler.  I wish they would get it down to much less, or even give it 
away free as they do their other tools.

On Jul 8, 7:05=A0am, larwe <zwsdot...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > =A0The bad news is if they do so they will likely get hugely
> > popular (being already more popular than they should be to my
> > taste, many people nowadays thing "PIC" is just a synonym of
> > "MCU" ).
>
> Microchip's compiler support is terribly fragmented though now.
>
> - PIC10/12/14/16 covered by third-party compilers only. Since uChip
> now owns Hitech, I guess this has changed, technically.
> - PIC18 is covered Microchip C18 (proprietary?). Free non-optimizing
> version.
> - PIC24/dsPIC is covered by Microchip C30 (gcc based). Free non-
> optimizing version.
> - PIC32 is MIPS, so gcc.
>
> Last week I did a quick-n-dirty consulting job for which I chose a PIC
> as it was the only micro with USB and sufficient I/O AND DIP package
> that I had on hand; rapid hand prototyping was the key here. In the
> process I got reacquainted with MPLAB and the horrible ergonomics of
> Microchip's tools... argh! And the fun stuff in the architecture, like
> ROM tables (const rom char [] =3D { x,y,...} ) that can't exceed a
> certain size but don't generate any compiler warnings or errors....
> yuck.

Regarding the PIC32MX: Microchip's GCC-based  offering is
C-only, with a bunch of proprietary extensions... meaning 3rd
party GCC products cannot compile Microchip's libraries or
examples without hackery. Microchip also does not provide
complete library sources which scares us. If you can tolerate
MPLAB, C only, and incomplete library sources, Microchip's
offering is passable, but really weak for non-trivial projects.

We adapted CodeSourcery's G++ GCC-based offering, using
Eclipse for development. If anyone's interested contact me;
I'll finish the web page describing this Real Soon Now.

Hope that helps,
Best Regards, Dave