Feature

2005 Microprocessor Directory: Charting your course

Follow the silicon-bread-crumb trail in this directory to find the perfect device for your project.

By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor -- EDN, 8/4/2005

Click here to enter the directory Contents: A summary of every vendor's device and core offerings Comprehensive parametric tables that detail all of the available processors—listed by vendor and by instruction set

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the 32nd EDN Microprocessor/Microcontroller Directory. The number of companies and devices the directory lists continues to grow, and, once again, we've expanded the company roster and table of devices by at least 10%. This continuing growth is a testament not only to the variety of processors available, but also to the tremendous variation among requirements, features, and the increasing range of applications for which designers are using microcontrollers.

Is this growth in processor options a precursor to an industrywide consolidation? Not likely. Successful microcontroller offerings and embedded-system-application designers stress the optimum balance of processing performance, power consumption, and bill-of-materials costs, which vary so significantly across the growing range of embedded-system applications that few microcontroller-product families are in direct competition. Some of the companies participating in this year's directory have for years been selling processor product lines but only recently began making them available to the engineering public.

This directory aims to provide designers and system architects enough visibility into processor options to quickly narrow the list of candidate processors for each project. As for the directory itself, click through and you'll find overviews of this year's participating companies and their products. In addition, you'll find parametric tables (posted as PDF files) that deliver a wealth of technical information on all of the available devices. The tables list only software-programmable processors, including cores and programmable-logic devices with embedded cores. The directory does not include DSPs; EDN lists DSPs in its annual DSP Directory, which it publishes six months out of phase with this one.

We welcome your feedback, because it can help us to make next year's directory more useful to you. Send your feedback to mpdirectory@edn.com. As always, if this directory helps you choose a processor, please let the vendor know how you found its part. And if you cannot find your favorite processor company or device, please let both the company and EDN know that you missed reading about it in the directory.

Editor's notes:

• You can print the PDF tables in two ways for the most effectiveness. If you have duplex (two-sided) printing, the file will position the two-page-wide tables so that each side prints opposite the other. If you do not have duplex printing, you can use the print properties to print two pages per sheet, if you skip the first (blank) page. Doing so will print both halves of the table opposite each other on the same page; however, the print will be smaller.
  
• Click here for a PDF version of this article as it appeared in print. This online version contains additional information.