Microchip makes a jump over all other CPU makers
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Microchip has just released a chip
that makes a jump over all other competing CPUs.
Despite being a tiny chip, it connects directly to PC through USB lead. Taking power from the USB lead, it can be powered up, programmed and debugged without ANY of the usual external components or programmers needed to do this.
This leaves ARM world and intel world trailing because they require special JTAG or other types of programmers to get their chips up up and running and that costs money.
The software for it can be written in C and runs in netbeans IDE that uses a variant of gcc as the compiler, and it all runs on Linux!!
Microchip has delivered some 1 billion chips to one customer alone! (Samsung.)
But this new feature will allow any school kid to connect up a chip by hand soldering a few components and start programming it with industrial strength C backed up by the power of Linux, Netbeans IDE and gcc.
PICs are superior when it comes to header files that describe CPU. Every single register and bit field is defined in a header file so when writing software and changing CPUs, its no effort at all. PortA.bit1 means port a and bit 1 regardless of CPU. Compare that with the crap from the ARM world. Going from Cortex M0 to Cortex M3 your UART will be called UART0 to USART0. ABSOLUTELY *FCKING* MAD!! This is a deliberate abject failure of MBAs (read non-techies running the show) that kills their own markets. It gets worse - the bit fields have no names. So you might call bit 11 of port3 PIO3_11, while the guy in the next cubicle calls it PORT3_11. And now the code is impossible to knit together.
As the CPUs get larger and become SoCs, then even registers don't have header files and names. Which absolutely and completely cripples portability of software, sales for chip vendors, and sales for ARM.
Microchip still haven't a chip that is fast enough to run Linux or big enough to run Linux, but they could and should do it, and release header files for their SoCs, and also have this USB connector programmer feature in, and they will just sweep the entire market. ARM and their crap will become a nobody overnight.