At 09:02 AM 6/24/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>I have a really stupid question to ask, but it's been bothering me for a
>while so I'll just ago ahead and ask it:
>
>Why is the PIC uC so popular?
>
>When I look at the specs of the competition, I see nothing but seemingly
>better products. Now I don't want everyone to get mad.. please. I'm simply
>a lowly computer science student who is still very new to this little
>hobby.. and I've only ever used PICs, so I really can't compare fairly.
>But the things I see are: AVRs and SXs are much faster w/MIPS, offer
>things such as lots of SRAM, etc.
>
>Are PICs cheaper? Is it because there are just so damn many to chose from?
>Is it because they are simpler to understand, so many engineers learned on
>them and still hold them dear? Is it because they have such a huge base of
>code/developers already and the momentum keeps them going? I guess the
>main thing I see is that these other uC's have such an awesome MIPS
>advantage... so why not use them? Are they more expensive?
>
>I don't know why I'm asking this because the answer is probably a
>combination of all of the above. But I keep wondering if there is one huge
>advantage that I'm not seeing. Anyway, just a thought.

Way back when..
Microchip recognized that OTP microcontrollers represented a potential
paradigm shift in the industry- the other manufacturers grudgingly
produced small quantities of OTP erasable chips for prototyping in
wait for the real orders of mask programmed units. Motorola also
recognized this to some degree, but being a much larger company
played it somewhat differently.

Microchip produced extremely cheap usable development hardware and
free software (at the time assemblers could cost hundreds of dollars). It
thus got a broad user range and became popular with small scale users
and eventually even hobbyists. At about the same time, Motorola reportedly
screwed these small users big-time by diverting a huge number of chips from
thousands of small customers who needed these single-sourced parts for
their high
value-added products to their few "real" customers in the automotive business.
Microchip's product itself was pretty awful at that time (16C54 level stuff, no
interrupts even),  but it was good enough for many simpler applications.
At least it was CMOS- which opened a few doors compared to the old NMOS parts.
Microchip seemed to have made a business decision to keep availability high
on their products, even at the cost of some profit. I suspect that Digikey
carrying
their products in the US was part of their success strategy as well.
Intel priced their 87C51 at a REAL premium price (I recall about $40 in
smallish
quantities) and, IMHO, lost the advantage that their tremendous head start
in the MCS-48 and MCS-51 architectures had in the industry. Cheap 87C51 and
89C51s came MUCH later, and STILL are probably the market leader over all other
8-bit types when taken in total.

You can often get better value, higher performance or other advantages
by going with competitor's units, but Microchip has a pretty good lineup
for 8-bit applications that don't push the envelope. Sure, by specing a
Philips LPC2xxx you can get a 60MHz 32-bit processor with 128K of flash and
16-64K
bytes of RAM (!) for the price of an 18F with very little math capability
and piddly
RAM... or a TI MSP430 16 bit processor (with 16 x 16 multiplier) and a real
LCD driver, but not every application needs the highest performance. Sure
you can get a mask-programmed hard-to use processor for 1/5 of the price
of a Microchip unit for a toy, but not every application needs the lowest
cost or has the volume to support it.

In conclusion- a "good enough" product, available in quantity and enough
variety, and very aggressively marketed to a broad range of less demanding
customers.

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

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