> Mip for mip, are the ARM instructions capable of much more? 

As always, it depends. If you can away with the RMW problem, a PIC can
set or reset a pin in a single instruction. This is a bit more
complicated on an ARM, but it can be done.

An ARM is a register-register architecture. So no direct manipulation of
bits in memory. Compare:

   # one 12, 14 or 16 bit instruction
   bsf some_place_in_memory, a_specific_bit 

with

   # 4 instructions, 32 bits each
   ldr r0, =some_place_in_memory
   ldr r1, [ r0 ]
   and r0, r0, # ( 1 << a_specific_bit )
   str r1, [ r0 ]

Now this makes an ARM seem realy bad. In practive variables or their
addresses will often already be in registers, and there is a more
compact Thumb instruction set.

On the other extreme: add three 96-bit integers, which are already in
registers

   adds r0, r1, r2
   adcs r3, r4, r5
   adc  r6, r7, r8

try for yourself how a PIC would do this.

> Or are the ARM mips more powerful?

in most cases, a lot more powerfull.

> Do they offer ICSP?

The ARM is not a chip, so you should compare a specific chip. My
experience is with the Philips chips, which have a JTAG debugger
interface (nice, but it claims 16 (!) pins), and resident bootloader
firmware (philips provides a serial loader program).

> Is there an IDE similar (or better) to MPLAB?

I am no fan of IDEs so I might not be a good judge. At school we have
made and use IDEs around PSPad and DevCpp, using Insight as debugger
with the JTAG interface.

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

Much more instructions and variations to learn, much easier to write
code (mostly: no paging and banking, and it is nice not to have to think
about the limits of 8 or 16 bit integers).

> What sort of peripherals do they come with?

depends on the chip. My lessons use the LPC2106. Check
http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/pip/LPC2106.html. I think it is
compareable to what you get on a fat 30F.
 
> What is the significance of the "Cortex-M3" name? Is it just 
> hype or is 
> it some sort of improvement on regular ARM devices?

I realy have no idea.

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 

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