[time-nuts] Follow-up question re: microcontroller families

[Attila Kinali]

On Sat, 25 May 2013 23:42:19 +0200
Attila Kinali <attila at kinali.ch> wrote:

> Last but not least: There is an advantage in using more popular
> chips (AVR, Arm Cortex-M). You will find more knowhow and help on the
> net for the toolchain or other problems. You will find more ready made
> libraries and code collections out there. And you will have a gcc version
> with less bugs.

A little addendum:
Although a lot of Arm chips are out there today, the Arm part only
concerns the core of the chip. Ie the assembler, the registers and
memory layout (with Cortex-M also the interrupt and part of the clock
system). The whole rest is _not_ standardized and varies from manufacturer
to manufacturer, even between differnt lines of the same manufacturer.

You will have an easier time switching from one Arm family to another,
as you can keep your toolchain mostly unchanged. But you will have to
change all drivers for your peripherals and some of the code that deals
with clocks and interrupts. Ie it is a lot less work then switching
to a totally new architecture, but the cost is not zero.

			Attila Kinali

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