MCU selection guide

A brief overview of MCU manufacturers and their products.

• 8-bit tinyAVR, megaAVR
• 16-bit XMEGA
• 32-bit AVR UC3, ARM
• Most common among hobbyists
• Programming tools are easily available
• Well supported in Linux - AVR libc, Arduino
• Dev boards:
  • Arduino
    • Arduino Duemilanove: USD30; The most common board ever! Features ATMega 168/328 (1k RAM, 512 EEPROM, 16k program flash) with 6x 10-bit A/D, 6x PWM, and bunch of other digital GPIO pins. User-friendly IDE. We have a couple of these, and some basic expertise (pasky).
    • Arduino Mega: USD40; Very similar, but bigger memory and many more pins. axtheb.
    • Arduino Uno: ?; New iteration of Duemilanove, no experience yet
  • AVR Butterfly
  • Elbow: Custom ARM board, b00lean.
• Other resources: AVR Freaks

• ARM Cortex
• Expensive and with many features.
• Already more like a stripped-down netbook w/o display.
• 

• 8-bit S08
• 16-bit S12
• 32-bit Qorivva (Power arch), Kinetis (ARM), ColdFire
• Widely used in industrial applications
• Mostly expensive dev boards, although there are some exceptions
  • Freedom KL25Z - Cheap Kinetis L-based board, pin compatible with Arduino

• ARM Cortex, many pins…
• USD50
• no experience yet

• Dev boards:
  • ASIX PVK40 - Microchip PIC16Fxxx (84, 877, 887) - PIC16F887 - contains almost everything except ethernet and USB. blackhead http://blackhead.cz/hackerspace/equipment.html/

• 32-bit ARM Cortex-M{0,3,4}, ARM7 , ARM9
• Good support in Linux
• Dev boards:
  • LPC Xpresso
  • mbed - overpriced prototyping board based on NXP LPC1768 ARM Cortex M3 with an onboard ethernet controller and online IDE

• Propeller architecture is suitable for tasks, where parallel processing is desirable (e.g. video generation)
• Dev boards: Propeller Proto Board USB, P8X32A QuickStart
• Well supported in Linux - http://hackaday.com/2012/06/20/parallax-shows-love-for-open-source-gcc-propeller/

• Cheap dev boards: STM32 Discovery
• 

• 16-bit MSP430
• 32-bit Stellaris (ARM Cortex-M), Sitara (ARM Cortex-A), Hercules (ARM Cortex, safety critical applications)
• Mediocre Linux support
• Dev boards:
  • TI Launchpad ($4.30 including shipping)
    • low-power,low-consumption,low-cost uP
    • flash emulator on daughterboard http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/MSP430_LaunchPad_%28MSP-EXP430G2%29
    • Wiring library (Arduino code) support at https://github.com/energia/Energia (pasky)
    • Linux support exists, but fragile serial communication
  • Evalbot