The goalposts keep moving!

The microprocessor has been with us for some time now, on my radar since 1974 with the release in April 1974 of the Intel 8080 which I first applied only a few months later. So I grew up and was 'educated' before the microprocessor. In those early days the choices were minimal, Motorola introduced the 6800 a little later in 1974. Despite protestations to the contrary that one or the other had some great technical or architectural merit it was really a matter of religion which path you followed. You could make a choice then being comfortable that it would hold good for a few years.

More recently the same religious fervour is evidenced by the proponents for the Freescale (formerly Motorola) 6800/6802/6809 ancestored chips versus Microchips PIC and Atmels much newer 'C' code optimised AVR and megaAVR. Each has its benefits, but logic defies any choice other than the one that I like!

But now the game has a completely new set of rules. ARM, of Cambridge UK, has turned the world upside recently with the introduction of the Cortex-M3 IP core. In a very carefully staged collaboration with Luminary (now part of TI) we saw the introduction of the Luminary Stellaris parts - the first M3's. Now everybody is on the band-wagon! Atmel (ATSAM3 is Cortex M3 based), TI through the acquisition of Luminary, NXP with the LPC17xx series, ST Microelectronics STM32, Toshiba and a new Norwegian startup - Energy Micro. All good viable companies, and don't count Energy Micro out, although only 2 years old they have some well experienced talent from Chipcon (now part of TI) and Atmel.

So now we don't get each manufacturer offering us a new architecture - we get them offering us different customisations and peripheral mixes all based on the same CPU core and interconnection fabric.

Oy vay!