Peter wrote:
>>>Press release : US$1 32-bit ARM MCU
>>
>>20MHz, 8k flash, 2k ram.  
> 
> 
> The first one of many ... but $1 is the price for 1k probably. However, 
> imho, once these things start rolling, byebye 8 bitters, 16 bitters, 
> it's been nice to meet you, etc. With those parameters it is competitive 
> with MCS51 compatible low cost cores, and about 20 times faster. And 
> this is just the first of many.
> 
> Peter

Ok, I'll bite. Not knowing a thing about ARM micros - other than that 
they seem to be proliferating lately - how do they compare against pics 
of similar memory size and pincount?

What does 32 bits get you?

Mip for mip, are the ARM instructions capable of much more? Similar? If 
a pic was running at 4 MIPs and one of these ARM devices was running at 
20 MIPs, is it 5 times faster? Or are the ARM mips more powerful?

Do they offer ICSP?  I see high end stuff like JTAG.  Does one ARM 
development system cover many devices?  Is there an IDE similar (or 
better) to MPLAB?

How do they compare to pics for writing assembly language code?

What sort of peripherals do they come with?

What is the significance of the "Cortex-M3" name? Is it just hype or is 
it some sort of improvement on regular ARM devices?

Some of these questions might be answered by their data sheets if they 
were readily available.  This outfit does not appear friendly - 
registration is required just to see the data sheets...

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