Hi Mike, That is pretty much my observation, too. However, I think it is short-sighted. If a large customer is going to buy 100K parts per year from you, do you really care about that extra $1000 USD? I guess they are trying to offset their software development costs by charging for the full version of the compiler (which, I agree, is typical in this industry), but I would think that it would generate a LOT of good will among microcontroller users if Microchip gave away a full-featured, free compiler for their parts. Sean On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Mike Harrison wrote: > Many vendors have taken the approach of a free, unsupported =A0code-limit= ed version, which means you > have full access to all the optimisations, while not losing sales to user= s doing larger projects for > whom the compiler cost is a small portion of overall dev costs. > > The FPGA/CPLD guys also discovered this a while ago. Some of you may be o= ld enough to remember when > entry costs for pretty much any PLD/FPGA development was well over $1K ( = not counting palasm, which > was the assembler of its time) > > I'd argue that these days, providing a free, reasonably performing C comp= iler is as essential a > sales =A0to a micro vendor as an assembler was 10 years ago. > Somewhat more so when the chip you are selling has such a compiler-unfrie= ndly architecture that open > source compilers are unlikely to become a viable option as all sorts of v= ery specific tweaks are > needed to get good performance. > > Compare with Atmel, where GCC is useable and there are also free code-lim= ited professional quality > tools (e.g. IAR). > > The optimistic view is that Microchip bought Hitech so they could provide= a decent free compiler, > and they will soon realise that =A0the way Hitech differentiatied free/pa= id-for products is likely to > be actively damaging to them and change to a free code-limited (I'd be ha= ppy with 4K) version. > > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- = http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist