Lpc2000

> 
> lp fan's comments are pretty much in agreement with what I have 
> observed, but I can't help stir the pot some:
> 

Ditto on the pot-stirring, I do agree with the memory-width benefits 
of Thumb code that have been raised, but I wanted to mention that 
there is another factor to consider.

Thumb instructions have very limited access to registers outside the 
R0-R7 range, so for larger functions with lots of local variables 
you may find that ARM code causes fewer spills out to the stack - 
memory reads/writes are 2 and 3 times slower on ARM than data-
processing instructions even from zero waitstate memory, and the 
condition flags are not set by a load, potentially adding an extra 
instruction for testing the value loaded.

The quality of the compiler will make a huge difference in the 
relative merits of ARM and Thumb in this respect. I noticed that the 
allocation of variables to registers, and register reuse can be 
truly appalling in the gnu compiler, compared to the ARM compiler, 
but I will qualify that by saying that I'm sure gnu has improved 
over the past 18 months.

Peter.