Roundup of MCUs and toolchains?

Sourcing
#1

Does anyone know a good source for a roundup/comparison of current microcontrollers and their toolchains? Anyone feel like ranting about their favourite/worst enemy?

I’ve been using PICs since freshman year and haven’t really put any effort into examining other options…until now. I just built up a new PCB with a PIC32MX and I’m beating my head against the wall trying to get the ICD3 to connect to it. After checking the circuit and datasheets 10 times, much googling, much swearing, it appears that people often have this trouble with the wrong version or combination of versions of ICD3 firmware and MPLAB. Or Windows. I’ve had troubles before with the flaky Microchip toolchain and this is the last straw.

Is there a rock solid, affordable toolchain out there?

Can anyone compare Microchip to other companies?

Who’s making “the best” MCUs these days? What are the different manufacturers focusing on right now?

#2

Great question! I’m not sure how much this will help, but we put together a roundup of dev boards, featuring various microcontrollers.

http://blog.upverter.com/post/102541343972/development-board-infographic

#3

That’s a great resource. It looks like only the familiar faces are represented there though: PIC, AVR, MSP430, ARM. And a few odd FPGA and Intel as well.

I’m worried I’m missing out on some great offerings from other manufacturers but maybe not…

It seems that companies are coming out with smaller, lower power ARMs these days? Moving down towards the PIC/AVR realm?