Yes, the ARM is a low-cost item, but it has competitors, perhaps not in cost, but in other features, like performance.

Intel and MOT both have high-performance RISC machines, and the, of course, there are their CISC machines as well.

ARM is a low-end 32-bit architecture with few compromises in favor of high performance or low overall system cost. The one thing that they all seem to have in common, though, is that you can't build anything similar for less money.

It's not fast for its class, but it's cheap. It's not the most elegant in its class either, but it's cheap. Do you see a pattern here? It's gotten to be quite varied and some variants are quite general in their applicability.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of app's where, despite the fact that the 8-bitter is simpler, it's not cheaper because there's more external hardware needed to connect external resources. There are also those app's where the fact that it takes less time to fetch an 8-bit datum, you can get things done in less time. They're like apples and oranges, though, and it's not easy to compare/contrast them in a way that makes them competitive.

If you need lots of SDRAM, or lots of FLASH, then go with the ARM, since you can just hook those devices directly to the typical ARM uC. If you need small size, low cost, and high speed in small, byte-oriented tasks, look really closely, because the 805x isn't always as cheap as you'd think, and you can fool yourself.

RE