If you are an eager beaver looking for high speed / high performance parts you may also choose to look at the evaluation modules from Cygnal. These boards cost $99 US and with it you get a ready to go complete development setup. The microcontroller is installed directly on the the eval board and contains onboard FLASH for your program. The PC connection is provided via a serial I/O cable and a small interface pod that then hooks to the eval board (and later to your target product if you put a JTAG connector on your product). The software development environment that comes with the kit includes a copy of the Keil tools that let you make assembly programs to any size and C programs up to 4K in size. The development environment also includes Cygnal's debugger which gives you source level debug capability with the ability to step/run/stop the processor on the eval board. You can also watch/modify memory locations and SFR's easily from the PC. It is also possible to run your program at full speed up to one or more breakpoints while running directly from FLASH at full speed without having to use a "monitor function" like many other debug systems function. This is made possible by a very nicely designed set of debug hardware that Cygnal offers on each and every chip that includes hardware break point registers. It is possible to break on more than just code fetches, such as when an SFR is read or written.

I pointed above to the eval module for the Cygnal 'F226 which is the part they offer that is most similar to the typical 8051. If you are looking for parts that have everything but the kitchen sink included please feel free to look at the rest of their web site. The eval kits for some of the highest performance parts are going for up to $149 US. You can buy them from Cygnal directly or from DigiKey.

The big Cygnal Fan !!
Michael Karas