On Wed, September 7, 2011 3:34 am, alan.b.pearce@stfc.ac.uk wrote:
>> ICD 3 is really very good when dealing with bigger PICs. I have not
>> used Real ICE but you can think it as a higher-end ICD3. Both of
>> them are using high speed USB and have FPGA inside to speed
>> up many things.
>>
>> REAL ICE, despited its name, is not an ICE (in-circuit emulator).
>> Microchip
>> ICE 2000 an ICE4000 are real ICE.
>
> Some people seem to think of the ICD3 as a cut down Real ICE. I think the
> Real ICE has been around a bit longer than the ICD3, so this may be true.

The PICKIT3, ICD3 and RealICE all come from the same code base and have a
very similar API- this is to make adding new parts and maintenance easier.
There are additional features that the debuggers are capable of, but that
is not just what the tool can do, but a combination of the tool and the
ICD silicon on the chip.  Fundamentally, Microchip makes chips. The
development tools Microchip sells are part of an effort to sell more
chips.  There are low cost programmers to make it easy to start
programming PICs, and as your projects and skills become more
sophisticated, there are more powerful tools.

Even in the days of the ICE2000 and ICE4000, the emulator modules were
*very* expensive, as they were not the actual silicon (in general), they
emulated the chip.  Even at $500-$1000 per processor module, because the
parts were being emulated, they would not go as fast as the actual chip
(for example, a dsPIC30 emulator I worked with would only go up to about
15 or 20MHz and would stop working if you tried to push it to the maximum
rated speed of the (non-emulated) part. You can try really hard, but an
emulated microprocessor will never behave exactly the same as the
production silicon.

The ICD circuitry uses up silicon on the part.  On the bigger parts,
Microchip can add it to every part and the additional cost is small in
relation to the overall cost, so it makes sense to have the circuitry on
(and wired out to pins) on every part.  On the smaller parts, cost is a
huge issue and the relative cost of the ICD silicon becomes a more
significant part of the overall cost. The types of designs you see the low
pin count parts tend to be really cost sensitive, and whatever you can do
to lower the overall cost of the part makes a lot of (economic) sense.

I'm sure many of us wouldn't notice paying a few percent more for a PIC10F
with the ICD built in- but the real market for these parts are the designs
where a few percent in cost means winning or losing the design.


Matt Bennett
Just outside of Austin, TX
30.51,-97.91

The views I express are my own, not that of my employer, a large
multinational corporation that you are familiar with.
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