I've played with this for a few nights and I'm starting to think that STM8 microcontrollers are quite nice. They are quite affordable, they have a lot of on-chip peripherals (like DAC, on-chip unique id, RTC etc.) and the register design seems quite logical. The biggest annoyance is the lack of decent (gcc) dev tools, which is a bit sad as it is a good chip.
I think I may use STM8 chips in the future if I need a peripheral that isn't found on ATmegas or MSP430s (like a 12-bit DAC) and the application is not math intensive (that's for ARM chips).
Yup, pretty much agreed on all of that. I went over the msp430 + stm8 + nxp and to a lesser extent atmel and microchip as well, and for stuff that is not super cpu intensive but does need lots of peripherals at a low price, the STM8 looks pretty good IMO. What I like most about it is that you actually get to use all your analog inputs and all your pwm outputs and your SPI etc. On others (notably MSP430) there's too much conflicting pin usage. That is, the analog inputs block using other features such as PWM or SPI/UART/etc.
The only reason I didn't rush to the store to get me 234234 of these is the so-so experience with STM32F4 toolchains. If the situation is the same for STM8S ==> meh. Ideally I'd like to do development for STM8S on linux, but if all else fails I'd even try IAR under windoze. Is there a free IAR edition with for example limited code size or something?
Also, since you say you are using IAR for STM8 ... how's the experience. Easy and happy ^_^? Grumble grumble frigging fracking tools grumble? Anything in between?
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