Today, I want to discuss the incredible shrinking microcontroller. Early microcontroller vendors packaged their offerings in 40-pin DIPs. They were physically small for what you got then, but huge now. These microcontrollers shared several common features: a lame and very proprietary 4- or 8-bit processor architecture designed more to fit on the die than to deliver much performance, a trivial amount of RAM (64 bytes, 128 bytes if you were lucky), and not much more EPROM (perhaps 1 or 2 Kbytes) to store code and permanent data. Even with such extremely limited features, these early microcontrollers ushered in a new era … Read More → "TI says its MSPM0 is the world’s most teeny, tiny 32-bit microcontroller. It’s smaller than a grain of white rice and costs 16 cents."

Microchip didn’t become a leading microcontroller vendor by accident. The company built its PIC microcontroller business from nothing to significant market share over two decades by cultivating developers, starting with college undergraduates. The company did this by offering a broad product line, inexpensive tools, and plenty of support. Microchip’s latest offering, a programming and debugging tool that sells for less than $30, continues that winning strategy.

Despite having far too many words in its product name, the MPLAB PICkit Basic In-Circuit Debugger provides embedded developers with a combined debugger and programmer that … Read More → "Microchip’s new $30 debugger fulfills Jack Ganssle’s prophecy from 30 years ago"