in this forum, when i come to watch everyones comments, most of the comments are regarding ARM processor, only few members are commenting about 51...
what does it mean?
does it mean probably every one is using ARM in the industry?
what does it mean? Nothing, essentially.
does it mean probably every one is using ARM in the industry? Of course not.
For starters this forum only covers 2 currently active platforms (251 and 166 can be considered extinct for all practical purposes), and only one of several available compilers for each of those. That leaves your statistic lacking data for all other platforms and compilers out there.
Second, the amount of questions showing up here is governed by a whole truckload of factors, of which usage is only a single, not particularly significant one.
Third, the majority of questions in here is quite obviously not related to any industry work. It's primarily clueless students asking silly questions either directly from their homework assignments or very closely related to those, these days.
The future is clearly not 30 year old 8-bit processors, the relevance of learning 80x51 for a career in embedded development is pretty limited. Assembler skills certainly have some portability, although if 30 year old tech is your thing the 68000 from 1979 would have been a lot better as a near ideal architecture with an orthogonal instruction set. The ARM design took a lot of the best feature of that and the 6502 Acorn had previously used, along with an analysis of other designs from the era.
Your phone, tablet, pc are not using 8051, or equivalent devices, beyond things like keyboards, or CD/DVD drives. Even then only to do housekeeping tasks, controlling custom hw/logic to do the real work.
One of the compelling reasons to learn the 8051 is that it is simpler, and has plenty of tools, and documentation/coursework. The usability of old tools is becoming more difficult with Win7/8 64-bit releases.
The amount of questions about the 8051 here relate to poor teaching and comprehension of the topic rather than real-world utilization. As Hans points out, a lot of questions relate to homework and lazy students. We didn't have the internet 30 years ago, we had to read the manuals and databooks more thoroughly. We are consequently a lot better at solving problems without assistance.
ARM is very popular and visible, MIPS is also quite prevalent in many SoC designs (networking/video), and derivatives in China.
It's primarily clueless students asking silly questions either directly from their homework assignments or very closely related to those, these days.
You are one person who shouldn't knock that. How else would you be able to get away with posting such self-indulgent responses?
The future is clearly not 30 year old 8-bit processors, the relevance of learning 80x51 for a career in embedded development is pretty limited. Isn't it amazing that when new chips where a specific application ( e.g. motor control) is integrated, you often see the micro being the '51 architecture. There are still 4-bit processors sold in volume.
Assembler skills certainly have some portability, although if 30 year old tech is your thing the 68000 from 1979 would have been a lot better as a near ideal architecture with an orthogonal instruction set. but are VERY useful in debugging. And who gives a $#!^ about portability in embedded.
Your phone, tablet, pc are not using 8051, or equivalent devices, beyond things like keyboards, or CD/DVD drives. Even then only to do housekeeping tasks, controlling custom hw/logic to do the real work. you are missing that a very high percentage of embedded apps are far less complicated.
The amount of questions about the 8051 here relate to poor teaching and comprehension of the topic rather than real-world utilization. and so are the majority of the ARM queastions.
No, I am not saying that the '51 is more important than the ARM but the reports of the death of the '51 have been severely exaggerated. (paraphrasing Mark Twain)
Erik
The point was not so much about death, but rather picking a horse that has more time to run, and a higher probability of providing employment moving forward.
Concerning the 30-year lineage, you also have to consider the number of engineers skilled in the art with whom you might wish to compete, many of whom will cling to 8-bit even when lower power and better solutions might exist. There are clearly places for 8-bit micros, and PIC's and the like, but the choices are significantly wider, and processors are becoming an increasingly fractional part of an SoC solution. Take most any Cortex-M3 solution, the RAM and FLASH transistors dwarf those used in the core, often by several orders of magnitude.