At risk of starting a religious war...Why should I *not* prefer the MSP430 to the AVR and PIC?Tell me its weak points.

It's easier if you tell us what you need.Just to start the religious war rolling, if you want a gcc toolchain for the device you are best with the AVR (Atmel supports gcc directly, and the toolchain is regularly updated). The msp430 port is based on an old version of gcc - it works well enough, but has limited support for newer devices. The PIC requires fairly expensive commercial compilers for C support.I used to prefer the msp430 devices - they are cheap, low power, have plenty of pins, have a very nice cpu core, and some nice peripherals. But the AVRs are now cheaper and lower power (for many parts), the cpu is good (although it's 8-bit, it's as fast as the msp430 at the same clock), and the peripheral support is good.

Disadvantages of MSP430 relative to AVR and PIC?

Dec 17, 2008 44 Replies

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linnix 17 years ago

NDA. Email me ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com) to sign one.

I have to be careful this time. I lost the last project because all the information I fed to the customer ended up with the competitor. Of course, I have no idea what the competitor is using, but something like M2 for sure.

I feel like the new Marco Polo, discovering the new electronic wonderland. I found at least three sources of M2 like chip. The first source requires external LDO and OPAMP, but the total BOM is still cheaper than the second source. I am still waiting for response from the third source.

I believe this is the 4 bitter everybody is thinking about, except it look and feel like 8 bits 6502. They are remarkably similar but different. It could be coming from a central design source.

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steve 17 years ago

I think the companies who do this are Sunplus, Sonix, Winbond, Alpha etc, see

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It doesn't appear they were cheaper then microchip, atmel, in the sense of functionality/$, but it appears they can give you exactly what you need and no more in exchange for some overhead costs/minimum orders/less support/what not

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linnix 17 years ago

OK, there are now at least 7. Your 4 and my 3. One of mine is cheap enough. We already did two prototype runs, and working on the third. They comes in box of 240 chips for USD $120. Volume prices are lower as well.

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Albert van der Horst 17 years ago

So what one can tell or not probably depends a lot of whether one can understand Chinese.

Do you understand Chinese (I can't)?

Groetjes Albert

Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- like all pyramid schemes -- ultimately falters. albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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linnix 17 years ago

And the price depends on where you are coming from. They figure that the USD is 7x the Yuan, so we get a 50% discount and pay only 3.5x. You guys pay only 4x to 5x with Euro.

I was in a Chinese hotel once. Security deposit was 100 Yuan or 100 USD.

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