DsPic33CK and AK

[Wimax]

I am pleasantly discovering the CK series, but I continue to be fascinated by the DsPic33AK series...if only there were a Positron for such little monsters...Les what do you think about such devices ?

[John Lawton]

Oh no, not another pinout system? What are Microchip on?

John

[Wimax]

It is the successor of the CK series with several improvements, 200 MIPS, improved CPU, double-precision FPU, 40 Msps ADC, 3 100 MHz opamps, several improved security features and other numbers that look very interesting on paper...

[trastikata]

I don't see the logic of placing a 32b FPU, however with 16k RAM only. It's a Digital Signal Controller which usually requires large arrays of data to be processed, so why on earth would they use only 16k RAM?

Unfortunately it looks like another MC Frankenstein where they simply combined existing designs from different chips.

[John Lawton]

It is the successor of the CK series with several improvements, 200 MIPS, improved CPU, double-precision FPU, 40 Msps ADC, 3 100 MHz opamps, several improved security features and other numbers that look very interesting on paper...

Yes, quite lot of hardware for a reasonable price but still missing any EEPROM which is disappointing and why change the pinout yet AGAIN?

John

[Wimax]

The devices put on the market in recent months (since last summer, if I'm not wrong) do not shine in terms of availability of program memory and RAM in an absolute sense, but new models with greater memory and peripherals options should arrive, maybe also with EEPROM (according to Microchip).
The hardware improvements seem remarkable to me, starting with those made to the CPU to the introduction of the double-precision FPU (theoretically...precision in calculations and speed), a considerable leap in the ADC stage and integrated OpAmps etc.
On paper, apart from the actual 200 MHz internal machine clock, the higher overall efficiency of the system should theoretically offer even higher performance, in terms of pure speed, than the previous series, which is already very good.
New pin-out with several VDD/VSS pairs... probably 'justified ?' by the integration of new HW. They could have tried to maintain, as far as possible, some sort of compatibility with the previous series for the same package. At the moment, as far as I know, the only miracle in terms of pin-to-pin compatibility I have seen is between the Pic24F and Pic24 H series.
However... without Positron, the A-series is doomed!   

[top204]

The dsPIC33 AK devices are actually 32-bit devices, but, apparently, also "support" the 16-bit mnemonics!

The key word there is "support", but to what level? I cannot find any microchip data files for the AK devices, or linker scripts of support with their compilers, so I will keep looking.

However, it looks like a very big job to add them and it will probably require a new compiler write, which will take months to write and test etc... And for what benefit compared to the 16-bit devices for general usage?

[Wimax]

Just to understand better: support for 16-bit mnemonics, if it were complete, would mean (theoretically) compatibility at the generated assembler level ?

Of course, the assessment of the complexity required to extend Positron to such devices can only be made by you Les!