The question is a bit vague, because what is "more practical" really depends a lot on the whole architecture of the system you are designing.

In terms of programmability, both architectures have their pros and cons in regard to different methods of communication, interfacing and generally any kind of connectivity with peripherals.

If your medical device depends greatly on precise AD conversion of higher resolution, than you would do better by using a chip variant that performs better AD conversion at the same power/processing speed/price range (depending what your ultimate aim depends on most).

If your medical equipment (device) consists of many parts and sensors that are spread over a wider area (measured in cm, like a network of sensors attached all over the body), than your device will probably need to perform a lot of serial communication between the nodes (probably via UART or some other way), so you will be implementing digital serial communication interface communication protocols in your software, so you should use the chip that has a larger and more customisable library for this purpose and which has a sufficient number of faster I/O pins for digital communication.

Now, another important aspect to take into consideration is raw processing power per Euro (or other currency unit). This is important if your chip will be tasked with performing complex and time demanding processing of data such as digitalised analogue signals (pulses, sound) or video/picture (analysis magnified photos taken via camera etc). In this case you should use this as the main weighting (pounding) measure when choosing the chip.

So, the question of ARM vs AVR cannot be answered without better understanding the architecture of the whole system and the task that the system is supposed to perform (and at what cost and with what priority).

Personally, I believe that ARM has a better chance of almost always beating AVR to the punch when it comes to almost every metric for final implementation, but it would not be professional to simply state it out of the blue without better knowing the circumstances the target system will run under and that it will be facing in terms of performance requirements, communication requirements, interfacing with sensors and other peripherals, power consumption per every performance metric as well as the targeted cost of the design (or at least the prototype).

With this said, I hope that you will make a more detailed analysis of the concrete target system implementation architecture and use its parameters and all metrics for deciding the best chip (not just the vendor, but the specific chip) for a concrete system and not attempt to generalise the question.

Best regards,

Milan Tair

The question is a bit vague, because what is "more practical" really depends a lot on the whole architecture of the system you are designing.

In terms of programmability, both architectures have their pros and cons in regard to different methods of communication, interfacing and generally any kind of connectivity with peripherals.

If your medical device depends greatly on precise AD conversion of higher resolution, than you would do better by using a chip variant that performs better AD conversion at the same power/processing speed/price range (depending what your ultimate aim depends on most).

If your medical equipment (device) consists of many parts and sensors that are spread over a wider area (measured in cm, like a network of sensors attached all over the body), than your device will probably need to perform a lot of serial communication between the nodes (probably via UART or some other way), so you will be implementing digital serial communication interface communication protocols in your software, so you should use the chip that has a larger and more customisable library for this purpose and which has a sufficient number of faster I/O pins for digital communication.

Now, another important aspect to take into consideration is raw processing power per Euro (or other currency unit). This is important if your chip will be tasked with performing complex and time demanding processing of data such as digitalised analogue signals (pulses, sound) or video/picture (analysis magnified photos taken via camera etc). In this case you should use this as the main weighting (pounding) measure when choosing the chip.

So, the question of ARM vs AVR cannot be answered without better understanding the architecture of the whole system and the task that the system is supposed to perform (and at what cost and with what priority).

Personally, I believe that ARM has a better chance of almost always beating AVR to the punch when it comes to almost every metric for final implementation, but it would not be professional to simply state it out of the blue without better knowing the circumstances the target system will run under and that it will be facing in terms of performance requirements, communication requirements, interfacing with sensors and other peripherals, power consumption per every performance metric as well as the targeted cost of the design (or at least the prototype).

With this said, I hope that you will make a more detailed analysis of the concrete target system implementation architecture and use its parameters and all metrics for deciding the best chip (not just the vendor, but the specific chip) for a concrete system and not attempt to generalise the question.

Best regards,

Milan Tair

Hi Mr. Tair!

Thanks for your helpful answer!

You are very welcome. An up-vote is always appreciated. It will also help others find the best answer at the top of any topic's discussion. Best regards.