Mark Ainsworth and Ranjith Mundoor, Cypress Semiconductor
EDN (August 17, 2014)
An 8- or 16-bit CPU may be ideal for your application at present. However, to stay competitive, you need to differentiate your product with continuous enhancements, including new features, faster speeds, improving product specifications, and reducing cost. If you don’t provide these, your competitors will.
One way to maintain your competitive edge is by incrementally improving your existing design. Over time, architectural limitations may make this process increasingly slow and expensive. Alternatively, you can port your design to a 32-bit platform. This can improve your product in several ways.