8051 C Compiler Recommendation

I'm finally moving up from assembler. Which compiler do you vote for? I can probably get away with the Raisonance Lite version but should I shell out the $'s & go for Keil or something else?

-------- Arthur Richards

Take a look here....I use they're compilers for 8051 and pic almost daily....I also sell them, so I'm only a little biased :->. They do have demo's on their site. You can try them out and see how it works for you.

Regards,

Scott

Copeland Electronics, Inc.

can

I've used the Raisonance Lite 51 toolchain for some years, after using a very old Keil/Frankling copy. It produces good compact code as far as I can tell. Support os also good.

Meindert

Keil is very good but a little $$$$ for a hobbyist. they have a 2K limited eval version for free if you want to poke at it.

"Arthur Richards" a écrit dans le message de news:d8o83l$jav$ snipped-for-privacy@news-01.bur.connect.com.au...

can

look at this one :

Try this, I haven't, but it might be worth it for hobbyist.

Regards Sukrit

can

I would vote for Keil...

regards

Dejan

Arthur,

Keil is the absolute market leader for a reason! You can by a MCB900 board from Keil, that comes with a 4k version. If you are targetting code size >8k I would recommend the full version of Keil's compiler

An Schwob

Arthur Richards wrote:

As you must know the 8051 is a great processor for assembly programs but it's not so good for C. You can expect a tripleing, or even more, size of rom space, at least doubleng of ram space and a reduction in speed of 3to 10 times. You havent indicated what kind of things you are writing so that may not be a problem for you. It's time to upgrade your processor as well as moving to C, AVR and PIC18 series spring to mind, I recently saw the new Zilog Z8 development system (hardware plus compiler) on offer for $15 so I would look there first. If your applications need high speed number crunching you should consider a 16 bit processor there are good deals on those as well.

"Arthur Richards" wrote in news:d8o83l$jav$ snipped-for-privacy@news-01.bur.connect.com.au:

Keil does offer an eval version but it is quite limited. I use Keil at work, and have been very happy with it. It produces very compact code, and was quite easy to get up to speed on. It has some extensions to C to support the 8051s specifically. It is pricey, and if you are doing this as a hobbyist, I would recommend finding something significantly cheaper.

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Richard

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

I think you'd be quite surprised at the code that a good compiler will produce for the 8051. I will agree that a very good assembly programmer will produce better (smaller, faster) code in general.

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Richard

I hope your software is better than your English grammar.

'their' compilers - possessive

'demos - plural of demo not possesive as implied by the apostrophe

'try them' plural - and 'see how it works' - singular

Ian

I had not Noticed! Where did you get those numbers. The worse I Ever heard for Keil is 10% to 20% ROM For a 10X hit on speed I would blame the programmer. Look at the List output to see if you inadvertently ask the compiler to do something you never would do in asm.

Hi Niel, it is very dependent on what you are doing. You will notice the biggest difference on the small jobs ie. single chip apps. Have you ever done a comparason? I have, not with the Kiel it's true but then I stopped using 8051's at least 8 years ago maybe longer. If you would like to write one of my small projects from back then just to see I'll be happy to give you details.

In article , Neil Kurzman writes

Some of the silicon manufactures kits have a 4K limited version

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In article , snipped-for-privacy@aol.com writes

This is completely incorrect. Due to the aggressive data overlaying etc RAM space is often a lit less using the C compiler than using assembler.

The C is a little less compact but mush easier to test and prove. There is no Lint for assembler.

AVR possibly but not PIC18. However why change processor and all the tools when all the OP wants to do is move from asm to C onthe same processor.

I would not bother with anything 16 bit now. Go for ARM if the 8051 is not powerful enough. Apart from specialit parts the 16 bit market will disappear soon.

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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
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In article , Neil Kurzman writes

I would agree with this. Also RAM usage will drop. I knew of 1 program that went from 125 bytes of RAM in assembler to 19 in C because of the data overlaying. IT was all pulled into Data space and therefore there was a speed increase.

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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
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That's not quite true - the market for "traditional" 16-bit processors is getting squeezed out by faster 8-bitters and smaller, cheaper

32-bitters, but there are 16-bit micros that have very clear markets with plenty of growth. The msp430 family in particular is like a solid 8-bit microcontroller, except that it has a 16-bit core, which is far more "C-friendly" than 8-bit cores.

It has been a while since I have used an 8051 with C. (Old IAR Compiler V4.x). This compiler generated more than a page (50 lines per page) of assembler to implement a call through a function pointer. How much code does a modern Keil compiler generate for a simple void, void function pointer call ? i.e.

void foo(void) { }

void bar(void) { void (*f)(void) =foo; f(); }

Regards Anton Erasmus