How to compare computing power of microcontrollers?

ARM is also a 32 bit CPU, vs. 8 bits for the AVR. So for instance, to do 32 bit arithmetic operations on AVR takes 4 instructions/clocks, while the ARM will do a 32 bit operation in one instruction/clock.

For floating point stuff, things are more complicated, but still the advantage goes to the 32-bit CPU.

So for 32-bit integer arithmetic anyway, a 60MHz ARM would be roughly 12 times faster than an AVR.

At least. Rember the ARM has a barrel-shifter that can be used in "parallel" with an arithmetic operation. IOW,

A = A + B

If you don't have hardware for both, I would write a piece of assembly code "on paper". This code should be represntative of a function that you will be doing for your application (ie. 16 bit multiplication and trig). And add up the number of clock cycles it would take each processor to run the same piece of code.

This calculations assumes each processor has similar instructions and the compilers you use have a similar optimization routine.

You know the # of clock cycles and the frequency, you can then evaluate which processor has a better performance for your application.

It is time consuming, but without looking at the Datapath / Instruction cycles you can't evaluate the performance.

Example: a processor may run at a faster clock frequency, but if the instructions you are using aren't pipelined well your just burning up power and not gaining performance.

Multiplication tends to be one of the instructions that is poorly pipelined in smaller cpus. So the # of instructions that MULT takes might be a good enough benchmark for your application.

Good Luck, Eric

IIRC, the AVR has an 8 x 8 multipler, wheras the ARM core has a wider multiplier (32 x 8?) and microcode to do 32 x 32 multiplies. By the time you assemble all the partial products with the AVR, the difference in speed might be quite large for multiply.

Personally, I'd write a little chunk or two of code and simulate it.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Good advice from Eric there. You should also be aware of the cost constraints of your project (is this a one off or do you need to make millions of devices?). This will also determine whether the effort you expend in finding the processor is better than going wity one that may be overkill in terms of obvious performance advantage.

"So for instance, to do 32 bit arithmetic operations on AVR takes 4 instructions/clocks, while the ARM will do a 32 bit operation in one instruction/clock. "

I would think its more like a 12-1 ratio, 32 bit add on a 8 bit machine generally requires loads and stores inbetween each 8 bit add

Don't know about AVR's but the above is a good site to compare the differences between processing power between 8051 and ARM's, it allows you to type in the frequency of each part and it will show you how long a 8,16 or 32 bit add/sub/mul will take as well as float trig functions.