Hold harmless Microchip from any and all damages, claims, suits,. The HI- TECH C Compiler for PIC10/12/16 MCUs is a free-standing. Consider the case of a bootloader trying to download an INHX32 file which fails. ![]() I don’t like to program PICs in C language. In fact, I even used to hate it due to the poor quality of the C compilers. When I started to program PICs microcontrollers in 1998 there was not too many options to program PICs in C. As far as I remember, only Hi-Tech, IAR and CCS had compilers – not even Microchip has his own one – and they were quite horrible compiling. But the fault was not in the compilers manufacturers, but in the PIC core architecture. Those days Microchip had only what we know nowadays as the ‘base-line’ (12C50X) and ‘mid-range’ (16C54,16F84,16F87X) architectures. Those cores were so simple that it was not easy no make a C compiler for them. Few memory, scarce resources, small instructions set, few addressing modes Anyway, who needs a C compiler with such simple architectures? Years later Microchip released the more C oriented PIC17/PIC18 architecture and a new range of C compilers for the new PICs were created. Finally we had “reasonable efficient” tools to program Microchip microcontrollers in C! Two years ago Microchip bought the Hi-Tech company and renamed their Picc compiler as XC8. With this movement, Microchip provide to their clients a cheap and decent C compiler as their old and deprecated C18 compiler was – in my opinion – plenty of bugs and not worthy to work with. I still use ASM to program the PIC12 and PIC16 family. However, I program the PIC18 devices in C but I often had to dive into the asm of the generated binary to optimize it. In those optimizations I have seen weird things made by compilers and I have been long time wanting to write about it. Today I am only going to write shortly about how the free mode of the XC8 compiler bloats the binary to make the Pro version look more efficient. I have been working for the past week in a new design and as my most important requirement is the size of the PCB, I decided to use the new PIC 12F1840. This microcontroller use the new ‘enhanced mid-range’ architecture, a revision of the classic 16F architecture with new C-oriented features that should make more efficient the C programming. How to install second hard drive dell xps 8300 user manual. I decided to break my rule of not programming a PIC16 using C and to use the XC8 compiler to test that “C-oriented” core. The firmware has a time-critical section were an algorithm is executed to measure the frequency of a signal. Running at 16MHz, I calculated I had 120 instructions cycle to execute the algorithm: getting the CCP1 comparator value, checking if it has only a small deviation from the past captured values, calculating the median and storing it in a buffer. Could the C compiler be efficient enough to make the algorithm to run in just those 120 cycles I had? I estimated between 30 and 40 cycles if I code it in ASM, so I was asking for a C compiler just 25% or 33% as efficient as programming in assembly. Well the answer is NO. The XC8 was far from being efficient enough to fit the algorithm. The generated code was running in 230 instruction cycles. At the end, I had to check the disassembly listing and replace those poor optimized C sentences with #ASM blocks. I bet nobody is surprised with this result and as you can imagine I am not here writing this post to tell you “C is bad. ![]() Real programmers use ASM”. I am writing this to show you a questionable technique Microchip uses to “motivate” you to use their paid version of the XC8 instead of the free one. Time before Microchip bought Hi-Tech, Hi-Tech wanted to release a free version of their PICC compiler (the current XC8). They decided to license a version of the compiler without any optimization activated, so their Lite (free) version was fully functional but not efficient in terms of size and speed. Download film serial taiwan subtitle indonesia. Even without the optimizations, the Lite version was very attractive specially to hobbyist and small companies who could prefer to use a more powerful PIC instead of paying the license to have a more efficient compiler. To encourage the purchase of a Pro license, Hi-Tech decided to make the gap between the Lite and Pro version even bigger by inserting garbage in the generated binary file when using the Lite mode. When Microchip bought Hi-Tech, they kept the license schema and still nowadays the Free version of XC8 has this “free compulsory de-optimizer” feature. Unfortunately, only Modern Life Is Rubbish contained a download code (I don't know why the others didn't) and I would like to know if anyone here could give me a zip file or something like that containing the MP3s from the album, the MP3s from the bonus disc and the 'blurbs' (basically what there is supposed to be in when you activate your download code on the blur website). Parklife blur youtube. I bought some blur vinyls (Leisure, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife and The Great Escape) and downloads codes are supposed to be included in those vinyls.
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