Mohd Parif wrote:
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Hi all,
Just curious.. which C compiler is better,
Keil or Raisonance?
Thanks
Parif

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OK here is the first post from one of the two companies mentioned in the initial post.

Better in what way?
The compilers share a common syntax and a similar options list. Similar because there are differences. Keil has float fuzzy and we don't. We have a few initialization and floating point options that they don't.

Score even.

Both come with tiny and full RTOS's although in Keil's kit structure you need to pay for the full RTOS while we include it in the Enterprise kit.

Favor Raisonance.

Both have proprietary editors. I wish that weren't the case for Raisonance, but that isn't my decision.

Score even.

Simulators are comparable but different. We have a better trace, they support I2C and CAN. They have an interpreted C like language we have a graphical signal generation interface.

Except for those protocols I think that the Raisonance is easier to use. Keil is slightly faster in execution but not by a lot. Most would never notice, just trying to be honest here.

Score even to favor Keil. /* depends on your application */

Code efficiency is similar, sometimes we are smaller sometimes they are smaller comparing Professional Kits. As an example, Mark Odell's serial example project is smaller under Raisonance than Keil. But one of the Cygnal examples that I recently ported was 2% smaller with Keil. I have seen Keil as much as 8 or 10% smaller with some applications. With today's Code storage sizes this is often not an issue with differences like this but if you need speed even 3 fewer instructions MAY be faster but that is hard to decide without trying it specifically.

With the Enterprise kit and CodeCompressor51 we are always smaller although the differences with Keil implementation of our processes in their latest linker we aren't smaller by as much. I have seen reductions of CC51 optimized code by as much as %35 over Keil. More typical is 10% to 12%.

Advantage Raisonance

If you are doing floating point then we are more fully featured. We have 32, 48 and 64 bit floating point. 48 and 64 are BCD. Larger than and not as fast as 32 bit but if you need the precision it at least it is there. This was a contributing factor to Raisonance being selected as the software provider for TI’s MCS1210 programmable ADC. They have a 24 bit ADC and our floating point allows the user to use the conversions without a loss of precision.

With the standard comparisons in some trig function Keil is faster in most we are faster but larger mainly a result of being completely reentrant.

Favor Raisonance for flexibility and in some cases speed.

Price is always an issue and if I can remember Keil's pricing scheme then they compare like this:

Compiler only
Raisonance Keil Difference
Comp Kits $1095.00 $1595.00 $500.00
Pro Kits $1595.00 $2595.00 $1000.00
Ent Kit $2495.00 $4590.00* $2095.00

*You need to combine RTX51 and PK51 to be equivalent to the Raisonance Enterprise Kit.

There are probably 1000s of other comparison points to be considered I have of course chosen the easiest to compare. :-)

If you have any other questions regarding this topic send some email or call.

Bryan Whitton