Are they absolutly necessary? It seems like manny exept one of the ARM proccessors require an externall flash. For the one that does seem to have internal flash would other external chips be necessary to run a simple program. I have run programs on 8515 microprossers. That is the compactness I am looking for.
I am hesitant to go with ATMEL, it seems Philips is more mainstream.
But I had a lot of trouble downloading tools from Phillips. Also, it seems the Philips microproccers do not have flashs. In that case maybee they the external equivelents of flashes.