I have noticed that for small and batery operated operation many of
the microcontrollers avilable become unusable. Most of those that use 8051 based core seem to consume too much.
Curiously, those PICs are really low power, current cunsumption going down to microamps (in normal operation!!!, not in sleep mode)......
It really depends on the application....
16f628 seems to be a quite good option now.
Cheers.
S.
there are those microcontrollers that have a low power mode and those that are termed as "low power" throughout its operation. the "low power" uC's are of course ideally for battery operated systesm
You tend to find that the microcontrollers are only low power when they're clocked at relatively low frequencies. The MSP430 range from TI is rated at a very low speed for its 125uA current consumption...