[fpc-devel] Circular references and forward declarations

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Wimpie Nortje said:
> Did you have a look at AVR?

Yes, but from what I remember it was canceled because the amount of
periphery on the chip is poor. I also looked at ARM, but while there is more
choice there, it is fragmented over multiple vendors, with multiple
toolchains (if a free one exists at all)

PIC32 is only interesting because it is slightly faster and has more mem.
But that would be more a future proofing thing, since we don't really lack
it atm. But motorcontrol parts (integrated quadrature encoder, preferably
several) is absolutely mandatory.

> They use GCC, although commercial compilers are also available should 
> you need it. I have used GCC-AVR for years without problems.

So does 16-bit microchip, and I'm using it for 2 years in production now.

The 8-bit embedded ethernet part (even PHY!) is the only exception, and
functions at the same time (same print) as spare part for stuff older than 2
years, so we can't get rid of it anyway and is quite cheap.