[sdiy] Now what?!?! AVR, PIC, or Scenix SX?

[Byron G. Jacquot]

>Atmel - Not all that fast, fairly cheap, very cheap to emulate, and they are
>all over! One thing though: if you are going by sheer mhz, they don't seem
>that fast, unless they can do 1 operation per cycle.. If they are like the
>PIC (1 operation every 4 cycles) then they will not be all that fast..

The AVRs indeed do one instruction per clock cycle, except when branching,
which adds one cycle.  

They also feel a little more efficient because they give you 32 registers
that really are registers: you can operate between them directly, without
having to move values into the "working register" first.  This architecture
also makes compiler design (and assembly programming) easier for the AVR.

If you're into navigating the open source world, there's a port of the GCC C
compiler for AVR.

The in-system flash programming is also a real bonus.

Last time I paid any attention to the Scenix stuff, they were screamingly
fast, but had almost no internal peripherals, because they expected you to
emulate everything in software, eating up those clock cycles!  It may be
different now, though...

Byron Jacquot