On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:11:22 +0300 (IDT), you wrote:

>
>
>On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Mario Mendes Jr. wrote:
>
>> OK, maybe not necessarily limited to pics, but....
>>
>> So, I remember when I started reading about cpus/mcus a long time agon
>> about why banking and paging came about.
>>
>> Being a beginer, I do find banking and paging to be a nusiance,
>> nevermind making code a little more complex to deal with.
>>
>> But rather than trash the idea, what I wanted to know from the more
>> experienced guys in the list is: are there any actual benefits to
>> banking and paging?  Is there ever a situation where banking and paging
>> actuall makes things easier/better?
>
>In theory banked and paged address spaces make for more compact program 
>code since the addresses used for any indirect access will be shorter. 
>But that is history (once upon a time code storage was extremely 
>expensive and nobody had optimising compilers). 

Not so. The bulk of an embedded micro's die area is memory. Cost is very dependent on die area (i.e.
how many chips you can get on a wafer). Cost is usually the most important parameter for low to
mid-range micros.  Therefore code size is extremely important, which is why Microchip do so many ROM
size variants. 

These issues change as you move to higher end parts, which is what the PIC18 series is for. 
  


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