Many embedded applications today can use 32bit microcontrollers based on ARM Cortex core which is beating down the 8bits prices and support. When you need more computing power including DSP instructions built in RISC, a huge amount of peripherals, timers, interfaces, high-pin count in FQP and BGA packages, up to 1MB of Flash and >128k RAM memories,… in one package, then you may look on a CortexM4 portfolio offered by Freescale, ST, TI, NXP.
Freescale offers its Kinetis K10 – K60 series with TOWER System development boards support. ST comes with STM32F4xx, NXP with LPC4xxx, TI with LM4Fxxx. Production samples are available from all mentioned vendors.