PIC32 vs Cortex-M3

[alberto110]

hi
we worked on project that uses AVR but now we findout  must take advantages of 32 bit Microprosseor with higher frequency and more
periphrals and more SRAM  . also i find 2 cases 1-PIC32mx  2-Cortex-M3  which is available in my region .
i guess i should take alot of time to become proffision on one of them . so before i want to know which is more reliable and overall better .

[oldvan]

A case of FORD -vs- CHEVY, neither is a Yugo.

If either will accomplish your goal, pick one and learn it, don't bother to look back.

PS:  I drive a Dodge.

[Mega32]

Like OldVan says , use the one that fits the job.

But that said , i'd still chose a Cortex-M3.

There are many suppliers (deliverance security) , and there are already Cortex M4's out (New development)
Last ... there are free unlimited development tools for ARM (arm-gcc) , and several debug dongles (J-Link , ULINK2 , Versaloon)

Mega32

[crahak]

Another vote for Cortex-M3.

PIC32 is single vendor, has limited development tools, and honestly I've never seen anyone who actually used microchip's 32 bit MCUs in real-life products that ship (only smaller PICs, and even then)

On the other hand, ARM is huge. Tons of suppliers. Thousands of different chips are available with various feature sets and peripherals, and it keeps expanding. The chips are cost effective, and have good performance/watt ratio. The eabi toolchain with CMSIS is nice (you can use C++ unlike PICs). It's free/open source, and it runs on any platform. It uses a standard JTAG port (like many other MCU/FPGA/CPLD vendors do, and which are supported by a lot of hardware/software). There are dev boards by different companies. You can "scale up" your design to bigger/faster chips later (or even down to M0 for cost cutting in simple devices).

Honestly, I can't think of a single reason why one would chose PIC32 over ARM Cortex-M3.

Edit: and if you want to learn and for cheap, then you can get a simple ARM Cortex-M3 dev board for free (that's pretty hard to beat, no?), like NXP's LPCXpresso. That also comes with a free IDE based on Eclipse and the eabi toolchain, provided by Code Red. It's pretty decent and very easy to use (connected/powered/programmed/and even debugged via USB). You can add plugins in eclipse like Subclipse for SVN integration.

Then again we mostly use other MCUs (different needs)

[powermosfet]

Cortex-M3 of course, just a reminder (ARM is the future).

each has its own advantages depends on what you willing to do.

p.s ARM bigger community support

[Manuel]

you can use a GUN to kill a mosquito ... it works fine, but :
- it depends on what are your project necessities...,
- your budget.
- further development.
- for some reasons PIC32 is better then Cortex-M3 for other reasons Cortex-M3 is better than PIC32.

It is not easy to decide for us.

You are the one in charge.

What I can say you is that PIC32 is provided in a proper delivery time in general, not always so for ARM based processor.

On the other hand there are many ARM based processors producers....

What will you chose?

M!