AVR or 8051

Nicholas O. Lindan <see@sig.com> wrote:
> > larwe@larwe.com wrote
> > >Nicholas O. Lindan writ:
> > >
> > > > Second sourcing is still important in industrial products.
> > > > A uP without a viable producing second source won't (shouldn't)
> > > > get designed in.
> > >
> > > There are VERY few uCs with second sources.

> My guess is those might be the ones that will still be around in 25 years.

Some architectures have (open source) FPGA cores available, which will help
long time availability. 

Bye
-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

In article <41ee950d$1@mustang.speedfactory.net>, mc
<mc_no_spam@uga.edu> writes
>AVR:  tools available from one manufacturer;

Not true. several manufacturers to tools for the AVR (it's just not
many)

> AVR Studio is free;

As are many 51 tools

> some 
>compilers have free evaluation versions; 

Most commercial compilers do. Though check they are not time limited. 

>STK-500 development kit is cheap.
Are there any others? there are 100's of 51 dev kits.


>8051:  no single manufacturer supports it any more;

No about 40 do for Silicon and a lot  more with tools  I think you will
find that virtually every silicon and IP core/fpga and ASIC manucafurer
has a 51 core. The same can not be said for the AVR.

Also the 51 family is being constantly developed. There are man new
derivatives and die shrink versions being produced that will of course
still all run the 8031 binary from the originals.


There are even versions with JTAG debugging.

> tools are freeware (old) 
>or commercial; 

The many many tools are:-
Free ware , old and new (there are new freeware 80561 compilers being
release now. SDCC for one.

A vast area of sharware and inexpensive 52 tools both SW and HW. 

Virtually ALL commercial tools manufacturers do an 8051 tool set. Again
the same is not ture for the AVR.

Some of the best (safety critical standard) compilers have free versions
that are size not time limited that are great for small projects.

there are 8051 tools that run on windows, linux and Unix.

>lots of code already exists.

Yes. and LOTS of dev kits most of the 40 plus silicon vendors do their
own kits (multiple) and so does almost every other dev kit maker on the
planet.

Basically for every 1 of an AVR  tool/ code example/ etc there will be
50 in the same category for the 8051 for the 8051

The AVR is single source with comparatively few tools. The same is true
of the Philips XA. It does not make them bad parts. Technically both are
VERY good. 

However unless you are doing this as a hobby there are many other
factors involved which may not make the best chip (technically) the
right part for the project. 


There are many reasons for choosing the AVR or XA. Not all of them are
obvious.  In theory the Qwerty keyboard is the woest design for a
keyboard. This has been known for years but alternatives are rare in
use.


Regards
 Chris

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England    /\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org       www.phaedsys.org \/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> Nicholas O. Lindan <see@sig.com> wrote:
> 
>>>larwe@larwe.com wrote
>>>
>>>>Nicholas O. Lindan writ:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Second sourcing is still important in industrial products.
>>>>>A uP without a viable producing second source won't (shouldn't)
>>>>>get designed in.
>>>>
>>>>There are VERY few uCs with second sources.
> 
> 
>>My guess is those might be the ones that will still be around in 25 years.
> 
> 
> Some architectures have (open source) FPGA cores available, which will help
> long time availability. 

  Quite true, but the long-term fish-hooks in Soft-CPUs are the silicon 
  supply, and the software tools themselves.
  There really needs to be a certain 'critical mass' - and the C51 
easily meets that.
-jg

> > Some architectures have (open source) FPGA cores available, which will
help
> > long time availability.
>
>   Quite true, but the long-term fish-hooks in Soft-CPUs are the silicon
>   supply, and the software tools themselves.
>   There really needs to be a certain 'critical mass' - and the C51
> easily meets that.
> -jg

For CPU + FPGA development, you really want to
have coverification, and AFAIK there are two ways to get that;
Send a $125,000 check to Mentor, or get the $100 STK594...


>