PIC32 IS THE BEST and ARM IS THE BEST
Hello my attention this post and I want to answer the most professionally possible
I work with ARM and PIC32
I started a large project with PIC32, when I started there was not even a single PIC32 market, but having much experience with the MIPS architecture and Microchip looking promising (128K of RAM, ethernet, usb etc..) made me decide to mount PIC32 on my board,
2 years after the first release on the market and sold more than 4000 pieces. in our company we plan to make the second release of our board, and I'm considering returning to ARM.
Why?
because the market is boss! PIC32 however the product is optimal, some limitations in the Fusion Hybrid microchip-mips32core and its costs for small quantities are high.
in the world there are many small vendors like my company can not buy 10000 pieces, but we must be competitive and do our projects in line with our capabilities.
to answer several affirming the superiority of the Cortex-M3 to the PIC32,
I would say that most of microcontrollers based on Cortex-M3 does not reach the performance of a MIPS core M4K mounted on the PIC32
According to me, microchip has not committed any error in producing the PIC32, we are undertaking their market space. getting closer and many people use 32-bit micros. maintaining the layer I/O compatible with micro 16bits.
making based on the MIPS architecture ILP is understandable to all and is an excellent starting point for creating software preemptive or cooperative multitasking
My personal advice is ability to move in different architectures and adapt your project to fit the same
There are projects where you need a MIPS32, another AVR64, another FPGA, other ARM7, one ARM9 and others where just a PIC10 or PIC12
I do not think that one should choose a microcontroller, just for the fact that whether or not there source code available on the network.
I leave here the differences
http://www.mips.com/products/processors/32-64-bit-cores/mips32-m4k/
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m3.php
both are spectacular architectures
Greetings.