Microcontroller --> Which vendor that has the best ecosystem for your needs. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 12:52:08 am
content: Per a 2014 survey, go to page 58 for the answerhttp://bd.eduweb.hhs.nl/es/2014-embedded-market-study-then-now-whats-next.pdfI was surprised at the top 2 picksEdit: I assume this is a US survey and my survey is global. So could this be the reason for the different results? Could someone, say from Russia, download the TI ecosystem?

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 01:23:18 am
content: None of them do. You should really build your own stuff if you don't want to waste time later on.But the survey is stupid nonetheless. Who's need does ARM ecosystem cover? I guess they mean Keil stuff here, but it is not instantly obvious, and Keil reuses a lot of stuff supplied by actual chip vendors.

author: jwm_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 03:07:23 am
content: If gcc supports it, then the architecture doesn't really matter. Most of my code will run almost unchanged on msp430/atmel/arm because it is standard C and they all have a nice gcc toolchain. I have to tweak the peripheral code usually if i don't have something already written, but i have to do the same changing chips within the same architecture so it's no big deal.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 06:22:58 am
content: Quote from: jwm_ on October 18, 2015, 03:07:23 amI do exactly the same. I don't need some stinking ecosystem put together by interns who have been programming C since a week.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 07:11:38 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 18, 2015, 07:06:43 amThey may save some time for original prototyping, but they do it at the expense of code size and performance.And for high volume products the price difference between 32KB and 64KB device may be significant, so much so that it is worth spending extra time and money upfront to save during the entire lifetime of the product.And that's why you see Arduino stuff used by hobbyist, but (almost) never in production.

author: ralphrmartin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 04:00:05 pm
content: You missed out Cypress.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 04:18:15 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 18, 2015, 07:06:43 amArduino is not the only environment with libraries! The thing is that most 'eco systems' just abstract simple stuff like GPIO, I2C, SPI, etc. What is more interessting and usually missing: USB (host and device), networking, filesystem, UI / GUI. Using a library for the latter saves most of the time. Abstracting the simple stuff just moves the task from reading the programming manual to reading how something simple gets obfustigated by an intern writing his/her first program.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 07:06:41 pm
content: Another remark: I think the answer to the OP's question is 'none of them'. What you see is that you can buy third party software solutions ranging from OS to all kinds of protocol stacks. The microcontroller manufacturer provided libraries are intended to get a blinky example going quickly. Not to provide a good base library; that is outside their scope and they usually have a third party they work with. For example: the code examples NXP provides for their ARM controllers are provided by Keil. Keil in their turn sells evaluation boards with these controllers.

author: richardman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 11:04:43 pm
content: First of all, the answers to the original survey should not be a surprise - TI is huge in the automation and control market. Their customers are the larger firms needing their reliability and support. The embedded market is rather diverse: you have someone who is knocking out 10s of "Wearable blinkies" for their Etsy shop, and then you can someone who put a billions of sensors under your finger tips on the iPhones.Notice that just in the past few years, you have the following M&A:TI bought StellarisNXP merging with FreescaleCypress bought SpansionSilLabs bought Energy MicroDialog buying AtmelThat's just the hardware, on the software side:Motorola bought Metrowerks (eons ago)NXP bought Code RedARM bought KeilTI has Code Composer (Eclipse based)Atmel has Studio (MS Visual Studio based)ST has CubeMXEEM/SilLabs has (IDE)Freescale has "Processor Bean"...The point is that a) there have been a lot of consolidations, and b) all vendors want you to use their chips! Well, can't blame them, because that's how they make money :-)Anyway, capitalism is brutal, and I think the market is deciding who will be left standing....

author: richardman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 11:31:41 pm
content: BTW, last company standing does not mean that they offer the best anything. It just means that they outlast everyone else :-)To the OP, as a third party vendor, obviously my view is skewed, but I would encourage users to look at how the silicon vendors work with 3rd party vendors. They are likely to be more "win-win for everybody!" rather than "come to me and stay!" FWIW.

author: jwm_
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2015, 11:38:27 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on October 18, 2015, 07:06:43 amNo, I spend more time debugging and decrufting random Arduino libraries than it would take to rewrite them from scratch properly. The only useful thing is that somewhere buried in them is the actual protocol used to speak to the device I can extract. It is some hella cruddy and bloated code in general. (there are occasionally well written ones, but it is fairly rare, i assume the good programmers are so turned off by the standard libraries they go and rewrite their own anyway).The best thing about Arduino (and it is a non trivial thing) is that it gives a good ebay search term that will return things that are pretty much guarenteed to have open documentation and painlessly interface with 5V digital logic. The worst thing is the wiring "programming language". Are people really fooled into thinking they are not programming C++?

author: retrolefty
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 12:43:51 am
content: QuoteAs it should be...

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 12:47:40 am
content: Communistic Tools and CPU's was not a success as much a s Trabant cars from DDR was.

author: westfw
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 02:08:15 am
content: QuoteAn interesting point. When I look at the "ecosystem" for a microcontroller, the vendor tools themselves are only a relatively small part of the equation. I also consider the existence of tools from other parties, how much the vendor cooperates with third parties, how many books have been written, how much code had been published on the internet (in each of the several tools available), and how much "community" exists. ARM and Intel clearly "get it." FTDI doesn't :-(

author: ralphd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 02:45:31 am
content: Kludge abstraction layers like Arduino are OK for testing things out, but in the long run the many poorly written ones will hinder you.The naive developer may think you don't need to know IP packet layout if you are creating tcp sockets for HTTP data. But eventually every serious Unix developer needs to run tcpdump.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 08:34:43 am
content: Quote from: ralphrmartin on October 18, 2015, 04:00:05 pmAnd Renesas.

author: richardman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 09:57:30 am
content: Quote from: ralphd on October 19, 2015, 02:45:31 amAgain, the embedded system world is diverse. I bet in terms of "anyone who ever programmed a microcontroller" that Arduino users are probably a significant chunk of the total population. However, I would be surprised if anything more than a small number of commercial products, if any, that sold in quantities are done with Arduino.As for being an advanced user - it's pretty remarkable how many professional embedded engineers are mainly hardware people that happen to write code, and they might indeed able to bit bang an I2C in no time flat and can catch a TCP/IP header on a logic analyzer, but they might not really understand software engineering.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 19, 2015, 10:02:11 am
content: Quote from: Scrts on October 19, 2015, 08:34:43 amRenesas may be slipping, but today they are still the number one MCU supplier. Its interesting how often they get forgotten, and left off lists like this one.

author: jnz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 21, 2015, 11:39:04 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on October 19, 2015, 10:02:11 amBecause they apply to far more to larger companies than hobbiest and smaller ones. I did get excellent support from them once though.I still think it's really weird "ARM" made that list as they don't supply chips.