Re: Moving from 8051 to AVR

Isaac Bosompem wrote:
diggerdo wrote:

Single clock C51 FLASH variants hit 33MHz, 35MHz, 50MHz, 66MHz, 100MHz
from various vendors - rather faster than the AVR.

So, why bother ?

Rehashed 8051 is a bit like your grandmother trying on a bikini.
Not a pretty site.

AVR was designed from the ground up to be a modern processor.


Why would a rehashed 8051 be THAT bad?

The 8051 is a great architecture, I moved from the PIC to the 8051/2
and have never looked back. The single cycle cores add life to the 8051
line and it still is a viable competitor to other 8-bit MCU's decades
after its first incarnation.

That's because the 80C51 was DESIGNED as a Single Chip Microcontroller,
and the tasks done by small uC, do not really change with time.
So it has great features for small, embedded control, data sets.

The AVR actually started life as an ASIC core, where efficent memory access was not really on the radar, but small gate count was.

Its had a number of band-aid fixes as time has gone by; IIRC
the latest one is psuedo boolean variables, as it tries to morph
into a better Microcontroller.

If you want to see a good example of a register-register Microcontroller design, look at the Zilog Z8.
That has real features like direct memory opcodes, and
register frame pointer - but of course, this was another whole chip
designed as a Microcontroller.
Both the Z8 and C51 use variable length opcodes.

-jg





It has tons of free compilers and assemblers out there and lots of
example code. It is more mature and is easy to find decent information
on it.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: wireless serial Radio-Link
    ... > The datarate is not critical. ... The ATMEL ATR2406 seems to be close to what you need, ... The ATR2406 interfaces seamlessly with Atmel's AVR Flash ... microcontrollers and allows for the design of a complete chipset ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: Microchip Introduces First 16-bit Microcontroller Product Line - the PIC24
    ... > it is a mid 70's design, but the AVR is a 90's design, and when ... I am not aware of an AVR compiler that ... > supports "generic" pointers, hence when using pointers the programmer ... IAR Embedded workbench can support generic pointers. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: What micros do you actually hate to work with?
    ... I agree, ARM may be nicer to work with, although how easy is ... I tend to prefer AVR (and as I design the hardare as well, that's what typically goes in) for small jobs, or as a system supervisor. ... I have one current product that uses an Intel PXA processor and it does the job well and at reasonable power consumption. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: 8 bit microcontroller market
    ... Same problem with the AVR datasheets. ... We tried a design using an AVR's internal ... the designers doing the analog stuff for the AVR is separated from ... Does "Baltic Sea" imply that AVRs are designed in Viking country, ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
    ... The functional blocks on the chip ... For this graphics design, and I'm getting into premature implementation ... front-end microcontroller do a fair amount of the work. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)