cr1901 wrote:
This is me playing a bit of Devil's Advocate here, but... it's as the topic title says. I'm also mildly annoyed b/c ppl are wondering "why not use ARM, etc etc".
With the general preference toward ARM for low power designs, and competition from other microcontrollers and other embedded solutions, it seems like WDC has it's work cut out for them to keep their potential customers and attract new ones. For better or worse, most embedded work seems to be done in C, C is best optimized for register machines, and the 65xx series does not make a great register machine. Although one can argue the single cycle memory access time alleviates this.
Perhaps this is because ARM and other designs are more publicized/compared to x86 (which arguably is the most well-known architecture), but I can't think of any commercial designs where a 65xx is used. But obviously, WDC is still in business, and the fact that they switched fabs recently suggests to me that WDC's partners have confidence in them. IIRC, VIA also does business with them/is an important customer. To that end, can anyone who might have information tell me how WDC is doing in the market, as well as how frequently 65xx is actually used in commercial projects? Bonus points if there are actual products which you can link :)!
ARM Assembly language has more involved than what you see on the 6502. Google ARM assembly language and see what the commands are.
ARM is something I've been trying to become involved in so I have a couple of different books on ARM and some of them are fat books and some of the authors charge whatever they want. I have two development boards that I bought off of Ebay and one from Mouser.
ARM is something that may require a Jtag cable or proprietary STlink.
I would like to get rid of the new way of programming the ARM chips with compilers and go with the old way (Machine Language Monitors), boot roms, etc.
I still have reading and a few more things to buy and I want to do things I've never done before but we'll eventually see.
It is fun to learn something new when there aren't a ton of tutorials or a lot of friends to push you to get into it when you are a newbie like myself who hasn't programmed a microcontroller before.
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Here's a quiz:
1) What are the differences between a CM0, CM3, and CM4, and ARM9 ARM architecture?
2) What are the differences between the ARM instruction set an the THUMB instruction set?
3) Compare a simple register-based IO port, a "intelligent" IO port (with set/clear/toggle registers), and a register-based IO port with bit-banding. Write an implementation of Arduino's "digitalWrite" and "digitalRead" function using each model. What other mechanisms have ARM processor vendors provided for fast bit-twiddling?
4) What aspects of the ARM are most likely to make writing cycle-accurate code difficult?
5) compare advantages and disadvantages of link-time vs compile-time definition of peripheral addresses.
6) which features are constant across all ARM CMx chips? Which are most likely to vary wildly? How do the various ARM microcontroller (CMx) vendors differentiate their products?
7) Who currently sells the most (number) of CMx chips? Who sells the most ($$)?
8) Why did TI discontinue ("Not Recommended for New Designs") the entire Stellaris line of CM3 chips?
9) Why did SI Labs pay $170 million to acquire Energy Micro?
10) What aspects of an ARM CMx chip/system add complexity and cost to a hardware design?
11) What aspects of an ARM CMx chip/system contribute to bloated binary executable size? Which are avoidable, and is it worth avoiding?
12) What is CMSIS? How does it related to ASF?
13) Several vendors provide extensive peripheral libraries for their ARM chips. Is there any commonality?
Lab: Build an ARM development environment from source code; for chips from two different vendors.
(From post#5)
If you started with the 6502, you probably have all the books, all of the experience, all of the articles. You probably have an eprom burner and dedicated power supply and all of that.
The 6502 is the most documented chip in the world. ARM has proprietary tool chains and stuff and there are differences between devices because I think they may have their own peripherals included depending on the manufacturer which means a slightly different architecture for whomever is building it.
Getting into ARM has its own cost to start up with this hobby and it isn't cheap for me.
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