Let me tell you some thing about hi-tech PICC based project which i did last year,that was a single phase power inverter design designed around a very popular PIC micro PIC16f72.
The above mentioned mcu has 2k of flash,128 bytes of ram,1 hardware PWM,timers,23 usable I/O,in 28 pin package and some of the features are listed below>>
*Intelligent Triac based phase controlled constant current charging.
*PWM regulated 230 VAc Output.
*Less then 3ms changeover time.(for PC compatibility reasons)
*Low battery shutdown with pre alarm.
*Automatic overload shutdown with self reset till 5 overload attempts.
*various status indications using 5 LEDs.
*Battery overcharge protection with float charging.
*variable charging mode selections with jumpers.
and many more features...
The compiler used was PICC and all the above was implemented using just 1200 bytes of code memory and 60 % of ram,nor any inline assembly code was used so from this only one can get an idea how efficient the compiler is.
regards,
SAIF ULLAH KHALID
INDIA