> I'm afraid PIC-class microcontrollers will have no place
> in the future.

Get a copy of Adam Osborne's microprocessors series of books. I don't
recall when these books were written, but I guess around 1980? Somewhere
he predicts the future of microprocessors (in which he includes
microcontrollers). I think his prediction still holds. He predicted a
split into

1) a low-end price-driven market where new architectures can get a
footheld when they are cheap enough (think PIC, AVR, 8051, Motorola, and
also cheap far-east uC)

2) a high-end performance and development-effort driven market, where a
newcomer will have a very hard time, so few architectures will dominate
(think Intel on the desktop, PowerPC for embedded)

I don't see confdigurable logic compete in either field, because it
fails in price for 1) and in preformance for 2). IMHO a third market
might evolve:

3) a special-purpose market for uC with peripherals that have not yet
made it into the mainstream chips of market 1) (think USB, FireWire,
active tags, BlueTooth, high-resolution A/D or D/A, codec, LCD-driver,
ethernet, CAN, etc). I think this might be a market for configurable
logic (although the Scenix approach might also be succesfull: just
provide lots of cheap MIPs).

Wouter van Ooijen

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Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products

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