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YOU SAY TOMATO

by Tom Cantrell

Start ı I Say Tomato ı DSC? ı All Grown Up ı Go Forth and Multiply ı Switch Hitters ı Sources and PDF

DSC?

While Motorola and Analog Devices dress up their DSPs like micros, the latest news from Microchip drops the other shoe. Microchip just announced a new series of digital signal controllers with the dsPIC30F leading the way (see Figure 1).

Itıs no surprise that marketing demands sticking with the PIC moniker, and according to the preliminary datasheet I have in hand, the dsPIC ostensibly retains a measure of PIC (ı18C) software compatibility.

While Iım on the subject of labels, as far as compatibility goes, Iıd say itıs like being pregnantıthereıs no such thing as "kind of" or "almost." To my way of thinking, if it doesnıt run old binaries, youıre really talking about something more akin to familiarity than compatibility. Thatıs OK because itıs quite difficult (witness the ıx86) to make a chip that doesnıt compromise the new under the burden of compatibility with the old.

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