f8

Among microcontrollers (µC), 8/16-bit µC are an important part of the embedded systems ecosystem since they tend to have substantially lower resource and energy costs than the larger, more powerful 32-bit and 64-bit µC.

However, existing 8/16-bit µC architectures tend to be either somewhat inefficient (e.g. MCS-51) or single-vendor (e.g. STM8, Rabbit). The latter are at a high risk of being discontinued when a vendor pulls out of the 8/16-bit market, and this has been announced recently for the STM8 and Rabbit architectures. One possible solution is to develop an efficient free architecture for 8/16-bit µC. The f8 is such an approach. It is based upon extensive experience from the large number of 8/16-bit architectures supported by the free Small Device C compiler (SDCC). Like RISC-V did for 32/64-bit architectures, f8 is based on lessons learned from the strengths and weaknesses of existing 8/16-bit architectures.