Post by thread:[AVR] WIN AVR

>What is the general opinion of WIN AVR? >Stable. Useful. Comparison with for-money products? >Code size relative to xxx. >Comparison with other available languages (BASIC, ...)? >Other? > >The price is right :-) > Russell McMahon We almost moved to AVR last year and I started to monitor the AVR-GCC list. Luckily we did not do that. Microchip is still a much better company to deal with than Atmel for small business customers. Anyway I still continue to monitor AVR-GCC list. I have not used any AVR yet but my colleagues in Berlin use AVR exclusively for quite sometime even though they may have to move to Silicon Labs C8051F or PIC because of supply problem. Anyway, from my perception, AVR-GCC is very stable. It is very useful. Its code size compares favorably with the best (IAR C), maybe with the exception of floating point which may have some bugs and maintenance problem (I think one of P+F colleague in Mannheim wrote the original floating pointing library but I think he is using IAR C at work). The AVR-GCC community is quite helpful. Signal to noise ration of AVR-GCC related list is very good and all the OT stuff will be thrown out. Interestingly the lead developers are using FreeBSD and Windows, not Linux. AVR-GCC is so good that the AVR port of SDCC is never finished. SDCC is now concentrating with 8051 and PIC14/16 port. I do not know about Bascom AVR. I guess AVR-GCC will be much better in compiling efficiency. The potential problem may be the documentation which is generally lacking for most of the open source programs. Regards, Xiaofan

>-----Original Message----- >From: spam_OUTpiclist-bouncesTakeThisOuTmit.edu [.....piclist-bouncesKILLspam@spam@mit.edu] >Sent: 25 November 2005 01:08 >To: PIC List >Subject: [AVR] WIN AVR > > >What is the general opinion of WIN AVR? >Stable. Useful. Comparison with for-money products? >Code size relative to xxx. >Comparison with other available languages (BASIC, ...)? >Other? > >The price is right :-) I have almost completed my first AVR project using a Mega 128 and WINAVR/GCC. Initialy I disliked it because it's optimisation is poor in a few areas, especialy compared to HiTech's offerings which I have been using for years. e.g. a trival (and common) operation such as setting a bit within a multi-word variable takes something like 12-15 instructions rather than the 1 or 2 it should take. However, the raw speed of the AVR means that my usual paranoia over wasted cycles was not really justified. Compared to the PIC I was able to write some very clean, well abstracted code and still have plenty of cycles in hand. Also, it's optimisation is generaly very good. So far I've not come across any actual bugs in the compiled code which is a pleasant change. The AVR Freaks forum provides pretty good support. The latest version AVR Studio also supports GCC properly, so you can use it as a full blown IDE, though it's simulator and debugger still seem to have the occaisional problem with the .elf files generated by WINAVR (and it takes an eon to load a big elf file, a minute or so on my lowly P3 work machine.) Regards Mike ======================================================================= This e-mail is intended for the person it is addressed to only. The information contained in it may be confidential and/or protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not make any use of this information, or copy or show it to any person. Please contact us immediately to tell us that you have received this e-mail, and return the original to us. Any use, forwarding, printing or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. No part of this message can be considered a request for goods or services. =======================================================================

Michael Rigby-Jones wrote: {Quote hidden}> > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: piclist-bouncesKILLspammit.edu [.....piclist-bouncesKILLspam.....mit.edu] >>Sent: 25 November 2005 01:08 >>To: PIC List >>Subject: [AVR] WIN AVR >> >> >>What is the general opinion of WIN AVR? >>Stable. Useful. Comparison with for-money products? >>Code size relative to xxx. >>Comparison with other available languages (BASIC, ...)? >>Other? >> >>The price is right :-) >> >> > > >I have almost completed my first AVR project using a Mega 128 and WINAVR/GCC. Initialy I disliked it because it's optimisation is poor in a few areas, especialy compared to HiTech's offerings which I have been using for years. e.g. a trival (and common) operation such as setting a bit within a multi-word variable takes something like 12-15 instructions rather than the 1 or 2 it should take. > >However, the raw speed of the AVR means that my usual paranoia over wasted cycles was not really justified. Compared to the PIC I was able to write some very clean, well abstracted code and still have plenty of cycles in hand. Also, it's optimisation is generaly very good. > >So far I've not come across any actual bugs in the compiled code which is a pleasant change. The AVR Freaks forum provides pretty good support. The latest version AVR Studio also supports GCC properly, so you can use it as a full blown IDE, though it's simulator and debugger still seem to have the occaisional problem with the .elf files generated by WINAVR (and it takes an eon to load a big elf file, a minute or so on my lowly P3 work machine.) > >Regards > >Mike > >======================================================================= >This e-mail is intended for the person it is addressed to only. The >information contained in it may be confidential and/or protected by >law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must >not make any use of this information, or copy or show it to any >person. Please contact us immediately to tell us that you have >received this e-mail, and return the original to us. Any use, >forwarding, printing or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. >No part of this message can be considered a request for goods or >services. >======================================================================= > > > I had problems with the WINAVR because I was a beginner and it will blow up your stack if youre not careful. An irq will push like a dozen+ bytes onto the stack, and its generally a stack-glutton. I redid that project in assembly to run much tighter and not blow the stack anywhere.