Microcontrollers Roadmap

What is the best microcontroller and programming language?

FAMILIES to learn: for my digital portal, list all digital chip families and types

Compare: Target audience, languages available, free compiler?, development board, cost of module.

families:

ARM. Sitara ARM Processor, Beagle. ARM express family from Coridium.
Basic Stamp
Arduino (Based on Atmel AVR)
PIC
AVR (AT series). Arduino.
Propeller
LatticeMico8 (soft embedded)
stay away from Make Controller Kit (nothing about it is standard)
PICAXE
OTHERS FROM MY MAGAZINES
Microchip PIC
Basic Stamp 2
Propeller
Arduino
Make controller
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
Arduino
Basic ATOM
BASIC Stamp
Arduinome
ARM express
BASIC Stamp
Fritzing
PICAXE
[PIC]
Gumstix
ioBridge
Humane Informatics
C Stamp
[Dwengo]
[Atmel AVR]
ARM processors (from many vendors) using ARM7 or Cortex-M3 cores are generally microcontrollers
Atmel AVR (8-bit), AVR32 (32-bit), and AT91SAM (32-bit)
Microchip PIC (8-bit PIC16, PIC18, 16-bit dsPIC33 / PIC24)
ARM

Atmel

Microchip produces microcontrollers with 3 very different architectures:

8-bit (8-bit data bus) PICmicro, with a single accumulator (8 bits):

PIC10 and PIC12: 12-bit instruction words
PIC16 series: 14-bit instruction words, one address pointer ("indirect register pair")
- PIC16F628 (Replacement for very popular but discontinued PIC16F84)
- PICAXE
PIC18 series: 16-bit instruction words, three address pointers ("indirect register pairs")

16-bit (16-bit data bus) microcontrollers, with 16 general-purpose registers (each 16-bit)

PIC24: 24-bit instruction words
dsPIC: based on PIC24, plus DSP functions, such as a single-cycle MAC (multiply–accumulate) into two 40-bit accumulators.

32-bit (32-bit data bus) microcontrollers:

soft microprocessor