[shmolyneaux]

As someone who has used the parallax propeller, I feel like you a doing a bit of a disservice to not include some reasons for or against it.

Cons:

- Comparatively high price point at $8

- The custom 8-core architecture is more difficult to make full use of

- No other chips in the family (can't flexibly move up or down in flash size / IO / core count)

- No interrupts

- Uncertain availability, and may be nearing end-of-life (this is speculative)

- Programming in C is secondary to the proprietary scripting language SPIN (which has an interpreter in the chip)

Pro:

- The processor is open source under GPL v3

- Multicore architecture makes it easy to create systems that work concurrently

- VGA output

- No interrupts

- SPIN isn't that bad... and assembly code integrates nicely with it

[cmrdporcupine]

Wow, some lovely downvotes for making a suggestion. Not sure how two words can be so offensive to people...

Other advantages to Propeller in addition to what you say:

  - DIP form factor, easy to breadboard

  - Very little supporting circuity needed. Very easy to set up.

  - Enthusiastic intimate helpful community on the forum

  - GCC available (not an advantage over Arduino but it exists you don't have to use SPIN)

  - Pretty high performance compared to Arduino -- 80mhz on 8 cores [tho that doesn't tell the whole story since memory accesses to the shared memory take a lot of cycles)

Other disadvantages:

  - Small memory space.  32k of slow shared memory space, only 2k per cog (core)

  - New Propeller 2 is taking years to come out and the old Prop 1 is really starting to show its age

[Taniwha]

I'm not sure DIP form factor is a pro these days - it ups manufacturing costs a lot - unless of course all you are making is breadboards - are there SMT versions available?

[cmrdporcupine]

Yes, they sell in both. DIP is generally better for hobbyists.

[smaddox]

Thanks for this, I was unfamiliar with this option. It sounds quite enticing.

I also found this article by the founder informative: http://www.parallax.com/propeller/qna/Default.htm#HomeTopics...