Just Answers - Computers and Technology

Assembler

Assembler is the most obvious language that you'll consider using as you probably won't need to buy any other tools to use it. More than likely the manufacturer will provide an assembler for the chip and you won't need any books as all the instructions are in the datasheet and you just start coding.

Thi

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

s route to programming is very easy but you may be setting yourself up for problems later on as:

It is trivial to write short programs.
It becomes progressively more difficult to write large programs.
It seems to be the best option as it gives the fastest code.
It seem

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

to be the best option as it gives the smallest code.

Assembler: Fast & small code

There is no doubt that assembler gives the fastest and most optimized code (your brain is better at optimization than any compiler!) but assembler is difficult – typically you'll spend ten times as long writing assembler

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

as you would writing in a high level language.

Assembler / Compiler Trade off

This is the trade off; to write the fastest most optimized code or to get the task solved more quickly.

Another problem with assembler is that to do even the most trivial task you have to think about every aspect of the code and all i

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

plications on registers and register flags.

Even making a microcontroller perform the most trivial task is difficult e.g. for making a loop in assembler you need to think about which register to use and which instructions all the while thinking about how those registers should not interact with the loop register/o

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

her registers etc.

Assembler: Problem - changing the target

Another difficulty is when you change from one microcontroller to another (even in the same device family) the assembler instructions may be changed e.g. more instructions to improve microcontroller performance. So you will have to learn an entirely diff

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

erent instruction set when moving either to a new target microcontroller or moving to a different device within the same family i.e. code re-use is not possible unless you stay with one microcontroller (or devices with a similar internal architecture).

High level languages

HLL: Retarget

Retargeting code to anoth

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

r microcontroller is easier since the HLL will know the details of the new target i.e. instruction set, fuses etc. All you need to worry about is the specific differences between the different microcontrollers (in the same family this will be setting up the internal peripherals).

The important point is that the H

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

L takes care of the assembler code needed to do the job.

HLL: Easy to understand.

The most useful aspect of a high level language (HLL) is that the language is written in a form you can easily understand – there are no cryptic assembler commands that you have to remember and most commands are made up of several m

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

achine code instructions – saving you coding effort (often there are built in libraries of code e.g. LCD driver, Serial port driver, I2C driver etc

So the HLL makes it easy to write code as it generates the correct assembler for the target microcontroller.

HLL : Whitespace

You can also make use of white space (a

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

eas of no code) to separate out the various operations within the program – typically assembler code is just one great big list that is really very difficult to read – I know there are comments but you need to comment almost every line so that someone else can

understand the code.

HLL: Task splitting

One of the

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

est features of a HLL is that you can split tasks into separate functions that you can concentrate on them individually (as the HLL takes care of local variables etc.). For assembler even when using a call instruction you have to take care of preserving the register state – in the HLL it's all done

for you.

HLL:

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

Code re-use

Once you learn the HLL you will find it easy to read code written by other people and you will be able to re-use code that you have already written whereas with assembler you will constantly need to analyze the code to see if it fits in with your new functions.

The only decision then is which high lev

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

l language? There are really three contenders BASIC, C and Pascal – these are the most popular languages and for popular microcontrollers there will be an HLL compiler for each one. I'll just list the advantages and disadvantages of each

BASIC Advantages

Very easy to learn and use.
A BASIC

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

ompiler will produce code that runs fast as a C compiler.

Many in built functions (depending on compiler).

Very popular – large user base with many example programs.

BASIC Disadvantages

Non standard language.
If using an interpreted HLL will run very slow

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

ly.

Note: Because the language is not standardized it will be difficult to move code to a new processor target type.

Pascal Advantages

Easy to learn and use.
A Pascal compiler will produce code that runs fast as a C compiler.

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

i>Many in built functions (depending on compiler).

Pascal Disadvantages

Not as popular as C – so not as many compilers.
A bit wordy – it was originally intended as a teaching language.
Not as flexible as C.

C Advantages

Compiled language - al

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

ays runs fast.

Standardized language (ANSI)- easier to port to different compilers / target devices.

Many compilers available.

Many in built functions (depending on compiler).

Very popular – large user base with many example programs.

Used in many differen

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

t industries.

Usable at the hardware level as well as higher abstraction levels (although C++ is better for very abstracted programming models).

C Disadvantages

Hard to learn at first.
Strong type checking means you spend time pleasing the compiler (although this p

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

otects you from making errors).

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tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Just Answers - Choosing a Programming Language for Your Microcontroller

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