Microcontrollers Roadmap

What is the best microcontroller and programming language?

FAMILIES to learn: for my digital portal, list all digital chip families and types

Compare: Target audience, languages available, free compiler?, development board, cost of module.

uP families:

• ARM. Sitara ARM Processor, Beagle. ARM express family from Coridium.
• Basic Stamp
• Arduino (Based on Atmel AVR)
• PIC
• AVR (AT series). Arduino.
• Propeller
• LatticeMico8 (soft embedded)
• stay away from Make Controller Kit (nothing about it is standard)
• PICAXE
• OTHERS FROM MY MAGAZINES
• Microchip PIC
• Basic Stamp 2
• Propeller
• Arduino
• Make controller
• [1]
• [2]
• [3]
• Make Controller
• [4]
• [5]
• Arduino
• Basic ATOM
• BASIC Stamp
• Arduinome
• ARM express
• BASIC Stamp
• Fritzing
• Make Controller Kit
• PICAXE
• [PIC]
• Gumstix
• [s]ioBridge[/s]
• Humane Informatics
• C Stamp
• [Dwengo]
• [Atmel AVR]
• Freescale 68HC11 (8-bit)
• Silicon Laboratories Pipelined 8051 Microcontrollers
• ARM processors (from many vendors) using ARM7 or Cortex-M3 cores are generally microcontrollers
• STMicroelectronics(8-bit), ST10 (16-bit) and STM32 (32-bit)
• Atmel AVR (8-bit), AVR32 (32-bit), and AT91SAM (32-bit)
• NXP Semiconductors LPC1000, LPC2000, LPC3000, LPC4000 (32-bit), LPC900, LPC700 (8-bit)
• Microchip PIC (8-bit PIC16, PIC18, 16-bit dsPIC33 / PIC24)
• Texas Instruments Microcontrollers  : TI MSP430 16-bit Microcontrollers
• ARM

Atmel

• AT90, ATtiny, ATmega, ATxmega series (AVR architecture) (Atmel Norway design)
• AVR32 (32-bit AVR architecture) (Atmel Norway design)

Lattice Semiconductor

• Mico8 8-bit soft microprocessor
• Mico32 32-bit soft microprocessor

Microchip Technology

Microchip produces microcontrollers with 3 very different architectures:

8-bit (8-bit data bus) PICmicro, with a single accumulator (8 bits):

• PIC10 and PIC12: 12-bit instruction words
• PIC16 series: 14-bit instruction words, one address pointer ("indirect register pair")
  • PIC16F628 (Replacement for very popular but discontinued PIC16F84)
  • PICAXE
• PIC18 series: 16-bit instruction words, three address pointers ("indirect register pairs")

16-bit (16-bit data bus) microcontrollers, with 16 general-purpose registers (each 16-bit)

• PIC24: 24-bit instruction words
• dsPIC: based on PIC24, plus DSP functions, such as a single-cycle MAC (multiply–accumulate) into two 40-bit accumulators.

32-bit (32-bit data bus) microcontrollers:

• PIC32MX series: 32-bit instructions, uses the MIPS architecture

NXP Semiconductors

• 8-bit
  • 80C51
• 16-bit
  • XA
• 32-bit
  • ARM7
    • LPC2000
  • ARM9
    • LPC3000
  • ARM Cortex-M4
    • LPC4300
  • ARM Cortex-M3
    • LPC1700/LPC1300/LPC1800
  • ARM Cortex-M0
    • LPC1100/LPC1200

Renesas Electronics

Renesas is a joint venture of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. In April 2010 Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics merged to form Renesas Electronics.

• 4-bit
  • 720
• 8-bit
  • 78K
  • SLP
  • 740
• 16-bit
  • M16C
  • H8
  • R8C
• 32-bit
  • V850
  • RX

Rockwell

Rockwell semiconductors (now called Conexant) created a line of 6502 based microcontrollers that were used with their telecom (modem) chips. Most of their microcontrollers were packaged in a QIP package.

• R6501
• R6511
• R8070

SiLabs

Manufactures a line of 8051-compatible microcontrollers, notable for high speeds (50–100 MIPS) and large memories in relatively small package sizes. A free IDE is available that supports the USB-connected ToolStick line of modular prototyping boards. These microcontrollers were originally developed by Cygnal.

• C8051F300
  • QFN11 package (3×3 mm), 25 MIPS, 8 kB flash memory, 256B RAM, 8 I/O, UART, SMBus, 3 timers, 8-bit 8 ch 500 kbs ADC, temperature sensor, Comparator.
• C8051F120
  • TQFP100 package, 128k Flash, 8448B RAM, 64 I/O, 2 UARTS, SMBus, SPI, 5 timers, 12-bit 8ch ADC, 8-bit 8ch ADC, 12-bit 2ch DAC, temperature sensor, 2 comparators, 16×16 MAC.

Silicon Motion

• SM2XX family - Flash memory card controllers
• SM321 - USB 2.0
• SM323 - USB 2.0
• SM323E - USB 2.0
  • Silicon Motion's SM321E and SM324 controllers support SLC and MLC NAND flash from Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba and ST Micro as well as flash products from Renesas, Infineon and Micron. The SM321E is available in a 48-pin LQFP package and a 44-pin LGA package. The SM321E supports up to 4 SLC or MLC NAND flash chips with 4 bytes / 528 bytes ECC
• SM324 - USB 2.0
  • Supports dual-channel data transfer at read speeds of 233× (35 MB/s) and write speeds of 160× (24 MB/s), making it the fastest USB 2.0 flash disk controller in the market. The SM324 also has serial peripheral interface (SPI) which allows for not only Master and Slave modes, but the flexibility to develop more functionality into USB flash disk (UFD) products such as GPS, fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth and memory-capacity display. The SM324 is available in a 64-pin LQFP package. The SM324 supports 8 SLC or MLC NAND flash chips with 4 bytes / 528 bytes ECC.
• SM330 - USB 2.0
• SM501, SM502 - Mobile Graphics
• SM712 - Mobile Graphics
• SM722 - Mobile Graphics
• SM340 - MP3/JPEG
• SM350 - MP3/JPEG
• SM370 - Image processing

Sony

• SPC700/700αII Series
• SPC900 Series
• SPC970 Series
• SR11 Series

STMicroelectronics

• ST6 (8-bit)
• ST7 (8-bit)
• STM8 (8-bit), STM MCU Pages, Extra info concerning STM8 family.
• μPSD (8032, 8-bit)
• ST10 (16-bit)
• STM32 (ARM Cortex M3, 32-bit), STM MCU Pages, Extra info concerning STM32 family.
• STR7 (ARM7TDMI, 32-bit)
• STR9 (ARM966E-S, 32-bit)

Texas Instruments

• TMS370 (8-bit)
• MSP430 Ultra-low-power 16-bit microcontroller
• TMS320F28xx (32-bit)
• C2000 32-bit microcontroller - For Real-Time applications
• Stellaris 32-bit ARM Cortex-M microcontroller
• TMS570 (32-bit RISC, ARM Cortex-R4)

Ubicom

• IP2022
  • Ubicom's IP2022 is a high performance (120 MIPS) 8-bit microcontroller. Features include: 64k flash code memory, 16 kB PRAM (fast code and packet buffering), 4 kB data memory, 8-channel A/D, various timers, and on-chip support for Ethernet, USB, UART, SPI and GPSI interfaces.
• IP3022
  • IP3022 is Ubicom's latest high performance 32bit processor running at 250 MHz featuring 8 hardware threads (barrel processor). It is specifically targeted at Wireless Routers.

Xemics

• XE8000 8-bit microcontroller family

Xilinx

• Microblaze 32-bit soft microprocessor
• Picoblaze 8-bit soft microprocessor

XMOS

• XCore XS1 32-bit, multithreaded, event-driven micro