8051 suggestion

Hi Folks

I am looking at developing a new application, that I hope I can do using an

8051 derivative.

Two main requirements that I have are that it be pretty damn fast (50-100MHz) and have I2C. Also around 6-ish external interrupts and port for RS232...

Have been looking also at using a RTOS....but this is not fixed in stone.

I am quite familiar with the 8051 and the keil uvision IDE

Looked at DS80C400, but its a lot of overkill on other features, so far I dont need TCP/IP, CAN and so on.

Any suggestions o learned people? ;)

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Reply to
wolf99
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-> C8051F120 runs at 100MHz, one cycle per clock. At the moment, fastest on the market (except ASIC variants).

Also there are some other variants that also run at 100MHz, but with less peripherals...

Reply to
while(1);

Well, the obvious learned answer is to drop the idea of using an 8051. Join the 21st century and use a proper microcontroller - ARM's are the new 8051's.

If you are somehow tied to having to use such an old and limited processor architecture, then I'm sure others will give you suggestions - there are a few fast 8051's. But it's like using a turbo-charged kids tricycle rather than a car - except that in this case, the car is smaller and cheaper.

Reply to
David Brown

Even though I'd rather suck a green lemon, I feel like I need to defend the 8051. I really don't think it's dead just yet. Old and creaky, maybe, but not to be rejected out of hand. Unfortunately.

But if you're talking about a 100MHz 8051, then you may be able to do the same thing with a 25MHz ARM, and they _are_ becoming available in some pretty attractively priced processors.

Have you looked?

--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

While I would agree, the si labs device's speed does compensate for the inefficient code on such an architecture and they are very cheap in quantity, not to mention the low cost of development kits, less than $100 for most. A far better set of devices than for example, pic, which still seems to have a very loyal following. You can be out of the box and running a simple program with the si labs kits in less than an hour.

Arm are obviously far more capable and prices are good as well, but dev tools are more of a problem to pull together, unless you want to pay K$...

Regards,

Chris

Reply to
ChrisQ

I looked down my nose at PICs for years, until I had a project where I needed to put on my hardware engineer's hat and choose a micro to go onto a board.

The PIC won, for their current drive capabilities, their peripherals, and the fact that Microchip has a good reputation for delivering, while you can't always get Atmel chips. The fact that the customer was insisting on PICs may have had something to do with it, too :-).

So the hardware guy (me) and the project manager (me) told the software guy (me) to just suck it up and write good code for a PIC.

--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

.

Same here. Customer insists on a PIC. But a PIC24 is nothing like PIC18 or PIC16. And with 96K SRAM, it is almost pretty good. I would have gone to ARM, but I never argue with the check (or the one signing it).

Reply to
linnix

Si Labs != Atmel, right ?. To be honest, it's years since I last looked at pic, but at the time, the absence of a proper stack really put me off in terms of compiled language suitability and the fact that they were some sort of knockoff from a late 70's Gen Inst tv remote contol device said it all.

Later versions may be better, but why bother ?. You invest quite a bit of time in a new cpu and develop libraries over time, buy toolchains etc, so it makes sense to standardise if there no overwhelming advantage. The si labs devices are a natural development of the old 8051 in compatability terms and even have a variant with 24 bit adc + 8 line mux, something no other device in it's class can offer afaik...

Regards,

Chris

Reply to
ChrisQ

Not until they merge.

That's PIC16 and PIC18.

PIC24 has GCC port, so don't care how ugly it is internally. Actually, it's not too bad.

Sometimes, they are external non-technical factors.

Reply to
linnix

an

You did not mention Pin Count and likely Code Size ? SiLabs would be a strong candidate, or the new Atmel variants with a ALU/DSP type support

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9&family_id=3D604

The Ramtron variants are also reasonably quick, and they also have an ALU.

Cypress have a PSoC3 in sampling, which is 8051 + CPLD

Or, if you want a middle-ground part, with 5V operation, an ALE pin, and similar peripherals, but a Cortec M0 core, look at the Nuvoton M0516. In stock at Digikey, and an Eval board is sub $20,

-jg

Reply to
-jg

On Mar 2, 11:11=A0am, ChrisQ wrote: . The si labs devices are a natural development of the old 8051

The Metering devices from Analog Devices, and Maxim (ex Teridian ) both have 8051 cores, and they have very good ADC performance figures, and quite low prices.

ADi also have ADuC series with '24b' ADC, and there were devices from BurrBrown (now MSC12xx series from TI, but with niche prices)

-jg

Reply to
-jg

That depends on what you want out of your Arm development tools.

Have you looked at the Olimex range of boards and JTAG programmers ?

I use them with GCC/binutils/OpenOCD.

Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist (at least when it comes to electronics work), so my requirements (and acceptable tradeoffs) are going to be different from yours.

Simon.

PS: As for 8 bit work, I don't use the PIC (due to it's architecture) even though it's very popular with hobbyists. My preferred 8 bit device architecture is the AVR.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
Reply to
Simon Clubley

Thanks for the ideas folks.

The reason I'm starting out looking at 8051's is I am the most familiar with it, and we have development tools already that are suitable. However I am somewhat familiar with ARM also.

The reason for the speed is I am dealing with VHF level signals, so DSP logic is actually probably attractive.

Will take a while to check out all the suggestions, but will try remember to let you know what I end up with

thanks again

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Reply to
wolf99

If you are talking DSP code, then a modern ARM Cortex M4 is probably several hundred times the speed of an 8051, clock for clock. I can understand why some people like to use the 8051 - familiarity is a very big factor in choice. But you should definitely look elsewhere on this project.

Reply to
David Brown

My thoughts exactly about the 8051. Sometime you wonder how the compiler could generate so much code for seemingly simple operations.

Like Tim and pic, I used to look down my nose at 8051 and an early project using existing client hardware (Philips 80C522, iirc) ended up at 6 code banks, most of which were data, convinced me even further. There's still a place for 8 bit though, in terms of rapid development, if you have time, effort and expense already invested. 8051 is not that bad, compared to some other architectures and continues to thrive, despite it. Oh yes, and the si labs kits come with the Keil ide, with a

4k limit, more than enough for some projects. (Dammit, they should be paying me for this :-)

Times are changing though and the arm landscape is so broad now that you could in theory standardise on a single architecture for everything...

Regards,

Chris

Reply to
ChrisQ

I bet they aren't as low cost, but probably better performance. The 24 bit spec of the si device gets knocked down quite a bit if you want anything like a decent conversion rate.

The ad devices are the microconverter series, right ?. I think one of that series uses an arm core, so we come full circle :-)...

Regards,

Chris

Reply to
ChrisQ

The compiler tools were/are the limiting factor with most of the clients I see.

"We bought a 8051 compiler 10 years ago, why spend even $100s of dollars on new tools."

hamilton

Reply to
hamilton

Check also TI's OMAP/DaVinci processors. They include an ARM core

*and* a DSP. (beagleboard, hawkboard)

My 8051 suggestion: Not.

-- Roberto Waltman

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Reply to
Roberto Waltman

The OMAP/DaVinci are also /much/ faster, /much/ more expensive, and /much/ harder to work with.

Reply to
David Brown

In the 80c522 project, it was the legacy hardware platform that was the trouble. Would estimate that it cost the client 30K+ ukp in added development time, because they steadfastly refused to consider a revised hardware platform. That cost is before you consider the cost of software maintenance, time to market and end of life parts availability. Once you start a job though, you have a duty to finish it, sigh.

Beancounters. Save pennies to waste 1000's pounds, just to keep the cash flow books straight...

Regards,

Chris

Reply to
ChrisQ

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