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Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

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Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#21

Post by jason_s »

vvanders wrote: post #16
jason_s wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? Microchip's IDE has always been free; the XC compilers all have free versions, the only restriction being that you can't use the higher level optimizations (-O2 and -O3 for XC16 are premium; not sure about XC8 and XC32)

It's been a few years but I also remember a program size restriction on the free compiler. Honestly, it's a difference in approach to tooling, Atmel took the approach of better, freely distributed tools. Now that they won't be around I don't know that Microchip will have a competitor in that space to keep them honest.

http://www.microchip.com/pagehandler/en_us/devtools/mplabxc/

nope, just optimization.

>Now that they won't be around

People in this thread keep talking like this is the "death" of Atmel. I don't see it changing much other than being guided by Microchip management to meet higher profit margins. If you think that Atmel's compilers and IDE's are going to be dropped overnight in favor of MPLAB X and Microchip compilers, you are almost surely mistaken; there's a big gap between architectures so it would be a lot of work to get Microchip tools to support Atmel parts.

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#22

Post by Gibbon1 »

chillingeffect wrote: post #4

Atmel was a sleepy, ran-with company until they had a hit with the tiny and mega series. They were a fresh architecture, ample peripherals, great documentation and open. Who could have anticipated the Arduino's success? Their transition past 8-bit was lackluster due to poor peripherals, poor documentation and unimpressive performance. They were on the ropes when the cortex cores delivered the coup de grace. I'm not s…

Would have been nice if instead of the xmega parts with the old AVR core + brand new complex and somewhat buggier peripherals they'd instead swapped out the AVR core with an ARM Cortex M0 core.

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#23

Post by strags »

I used to have a favorable opinion of Microchip, until their patent case against Scenix.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Court+Rules+for+Scenix+Semicon...

Featuring such fabulous claims as:

-- Having a number of I/O pins that is less than the instruction word size; the SX Series 12-bit instruction word is clearly smaller than its number of I/O pins.

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#24

Post by ArkyBeagle »

jwatte wrote: post #2

While Atmel MCUs are nice and robust (especially avr-gcc and avr-libc are great advantages) they seen like quite high cost. Cheaper ARMs probably are eating their lunch. Meanwhile, I've never been friends with the microchip Dev tools. Clunky, expensive, proprietary. Here's hoping we'll get AVR ergonomics and PIC economics... But it might be too late to matter. Cortex-M0 eats the low end, M4 the mid end, and the phone…

Microchip dev tools are free. An ICD 3 isn't, but they're relatively inexpensive. Not sure, but I think the latest MPLAB-X is Eclipse.

I have no complaints with them.

Atmel AVR will redesign things out from under you. We could not get a new JTAG interface to work with an old chip.

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#27

Post by buserror »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #22
chillingeffect wrote: post #4

Atmel was a sleepy, ran-with company until they had a hit with the tiny and mega series. They were a fresh architecture, ample peripherals, great documentation and open. Who could have anticipated the Arduino's success? Their transition past 8-bit was lackluster due to poor peripherals, poor documentation and unimpressive performance. They were on the ropes when the cortex cores delivered the coup de grace. I'm not s…

Would have been nice if instead of the xmega parts with the old AVR core + brand new complex and somewhat buggier peripherals they'd instead swapped out the AVR core with an ARM Cortex M0 core.

Not really. for all intent and purpose, the AVR peripherals are very limited. Yes they are easy to use etc, but they are VERY limited -- no FIFO on any of the serial interfaces for example...

There are much, much better IP to do these kind of things if you decide to upgrade the core...

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#28

Post by IshKebab »

jwatte wrote: post #2

While Atmel MCUs are nice and robust (especially avr-gcc and avr-libc are great advantages) they seen like quite high cost. Cheaper ARMs probably are eating their lunch. Meanwhile, I've never been friends with the microchip Dev tools. Clunky, expensive, proprietary. Here's hoping we'll get AVR ergonomics and PIC economics... But it might be too late to matter. Cortex-M0 eats the low end, M4 the mid end, and the phone…

> But it might be too late to matter. Cortex-M0 eats the low end, M4 the mid end, and the phone SoCs the high end.

You know Atmel makes Cortex M chips too right? They're very good in my experience - e.g. they have some of the very few Cortex chips that support USB High Speed (480 Mb/s).

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#29

Post by andrey-g »

nerfhammer wrote: post #20
gherkin0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it more that Arduino boards dominate the hobbyist microcontroller space, and they have historically used AVR? IIRC, most new Arduino models are now ARM based.

Newer ones coming out are ARM but they're not a direct replacement yet due to being significantly more expensive uno currently retails for $25, the arm-based zero is going for $50

Uno and Zero are not directly comparable.

Re: Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B

#30

Post by wycx »

gherkin0 wrote: post #18
dmschulman wrote: post #3

Atmel is so visible though, no wonder they're getting gobbled up. From a hobbyist point of view, I see so many projects involving Atmel chips is almost makes me think they have a monopoly on that, growing, segment of the market. This probably has as much to do with cheaper cost as it does with (relative) ease of use.

Isn't it more that Arduino boards dominate the hobbyist microcontroller space, and they have historically used AVR? IIRC, most new Arduino models are now ARM based.

There are even some MIPS ones like the Yun which use Atheros SoCs.
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