What SICK man network fourteen 8-bit AVRs?
The related project looks very interesting:
I'm experimenting with using (smaller) clusters of 8-bitters for low-power processing/splitting a single UART input, that's sending large amounts of serial data from one input into multiple serial outputs but where not all of them might be in use at any one time, or one output needs a lot of processing done at a given time but the others aren't sending much. so you might be able to have two or more processors collaborate.
Sort of like those V8s that can shut down cylinders when highway cruising and V8 power not required.
I don't know yet if this will have any actual power savings/cost advantage to using one big fuck-off fast ARM to do everything but is fun to experiment with.
Most ARMs don't have the required number of UARTs on board for output anyway so you'd have to buy some i2c to multi-UART bridge chips or something if you want niceities like hardware FIFO buffering and they tend to be expensive, more expensive than an 8 bitter with its own onboard UART. and they tend to come from Maxim...