Andy Grove's book, "Only the Paranoid Survive", talks about strategic inflection points (SIPs).  An SIP is a change in your business that is so profound that it suddenly changes the way you do business.  For microcontrollers, a strategic inflection point is occurring that's changing the way companies evaluate and choose microcontrollers:

1. The software engineer's "world of the microcontroller" is his/her development PC and all the development tools loaded on it - the compiler, debugger/simulator, In-Circuit Emulator, etc.
2. An evaluation of the microcontroller demands a simultaneous evaluation of the development tools
3. With the many good cores on the market today capable of handling an engineer's target application, the deciding factor is going to be the development tools used to evaluate the cores.
4. Long-term, SW engineers will stop calling XYZ Microelectronics to evaluate their product. Soon, the engineer will instead download from the web a multi-core evaluation compiler from Known Good Software Compilers, Inc., load their code, and compile and test code size & execution time for five or more cores. The semiconductor vendor will hear about the evaluation when it comes time to check for availability.

The microcontroller/microprocessor business is the core (ouch!) of the system-on-chip technology changes that are shaping today's world. This web site is an effort to help keep up and chart these changes.

-Bill Giovino
Editor, Microcontroller.com