"small pics have 33 instruction sets, so it is very easy to learn them all and understand the program."

First, I'll admit I've never used a PIC, never even looked at the datasheet for one.

But the downside to there only being 33 instructions as opposed to 255 with the 8052 is that your program is going to have to be larger. Since I've never used the PIC and don't even know how much/if it comes with on-board code memory this may not be an issue. But logic tells me that if there are only 33 instructions instead of 255 that the resulting program to accomplish the same thing would be larger for a PIC than an 8052.

I'm not sure that the "33 instructions" is even an advantage to the assembly language programmer. The 8052 has 255 opcodes, but there are really only 44 different types of instructions on the 8052--the rest of the opcodes are used for various addressing modes. It's not like the other 211 opcodes take any extra time to learn, but they do provide more flexibility.

Considering the newest PIC is reporting 10 MIPS at 40MHZ (from Microchip.com website), the new 8052's that do 50MIPS @ 50Mhz kind of blow away the PIC speed-wise. And considering that each 8052 instruction is more efficient (i.e, there are more things a single instruction can do) it would seem to me that the 8052 would be faster.

Does anyone have any side-by-side comparisons that could show the comparative size and speed of a couple of apps for both the 8052 and PIC?

Craig Steiner