Atmel Bought by Microchip

Not sure how I missed this one for two months. I see there is already some serious contention with Atmel employees.

formatting link

I wonder what it will be like for the sales force to be selling PICs, AVRs and ARMs all into much of the same market space? I wonder if the PIC32 will finally bite the dust with ARMs all around it crowding it out of the market? Or maybe the dsPIC will go away?

--

Rick C
Reply to
rickman
Loading thread data ...

I think you're at the wrong end of the telescope. This is pretty clearly a consolidation in a falling market. Microchip doesn't appear to be able to conform to severance agreements.

I've never held that ARM was much in the same space as PIC32. At least the tooling is pretty radically different. And I can't say I'm too sad if AVR just goes away.

The problem is that I don't have any direct exposure to the tiny ARM offerings, mainly because the peripheral mix chosen on projects I worked on fit PIC32 or PIC24 better.

Really, when we're saying ARM these days, it more means something big enough to build a cell phone on.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

Maybe that's what it means when you say it. The last ARM project I did was a 16-pin part with 8KB of ROM and 2KB of RAM.

--
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! You were s'posed 
                                  at               to laugh! 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Grant Edwards

And then there's that :)

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

It would be a pity for the Arduino folks.

Some Cortex M0s are under half a buck at distributor prices, which is a lot cheaper than an ATmega.

Well, you don't know how the other half lives. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

It definitely would. Maybe I'm biased, but after working with AVRs for several years IMO at the 8 bit low end the AVR optimized-for-C architecture, plus a free high-quality compiler with full optimizations for every device, is the clear winner over the old-ass PICs.

Only turbonerds hand write ASM for any real shit these days.

Reply to
bitrex

Why would you say the ARMs aren't "in the same space as PIC32"? They are both available at about the same performance levels, both come with a range of memory and peripherals. I think the main difference is there is one company making PIC32s while there are dozens making ARM devices for the same applications.

--

Rick C
Reply to
rickman

But then again, a few twigs and a bit of string is a clear winner over old-ass PICs.

--
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! It's some people 
                                  at               inside the wall!  This is 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Grant Edwards

I disagree. The ARM A-core is for cell-phone sized stuff (and possibly desktop). But the Cortex M-cores show up in some pretty small processors. Anything that can be had for under a buck in quantity isn't a "big processor".

--
Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Tim Wescott

There are plenty of Arduino-compatible boards with non-AVR chips. Microchip makes one. Plus there is one with an Atmel Cortex M0, SAMD21, the Arduino Zero .

I think that Arduino will gradually move away from the AVR line, but it is a very profitable product line and Atmel would not discontinue it. After all, you can buy a Cortex M? from a bunch of companies, but an AVR user might not want to convert to ARM.

My former colleague is a "Wizard of Make" and senior manager at Atmel and runs around the world promoting Arduino. I hope he's safe.

Reply to
sms

Perhaps I'm in error but I hold those as reasonably separate - I doubt they'd dump Arduino.

The AVR stacks are pretty raunchy, and I've run into obsolescence problems with them.

This is also true. I haven't had the privilege yet.

I just meant as a function of population of chips.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

I don't think Arduino is much of a factor in the big picture. What matters is sales and Arduino is oneseys-twoseys. They care about sales of millions. I don't know what sort of profitability the AVR provides to Atmel, but I think it might be hard for Microchip to shut it down without doing damage to the bottom line.

Not sure what that means.

Not sure if this is a valid comparison. CM0s under a dollar are very limited devices. I can't imagine there aren't AVRs with similar capabilities at similar prices.

--

Rick C
Reply to
rickman

What we'd found is that the PIC32 fit better. The Cortex M had, in general, fewer peripherals. But this is gonna be an observer bias thing. I was also pushing for an Ethernet port, and it seems like PIC had a better story there.

This is also true. I just found the PIC series to be very easy to work with.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

Yeah. So many processors, so little time.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

I recall a discussion on this some years ago. I can't imagine this is still true in any meaningful way unless you have very unusual requirements. Let's face it, if the ARM CMx devices didn't cut the mustard in some way, they would not have taken off as they did.

I also remember a conversation some years back where I forecast the rise of the ARM to dominate the MCU market. Some argued that the core didn't matter in a meaningful way, much more important were the peripherals which change between different makers even with the same CPU core. That is all true, but it has become irrelevant as users pick a CPU core and become comfortable with that. Even if they have to switch makers to get a peripheral they want, as long as the new devices is supported by the same tools they often are willing to do that.

With the PIC32 you are stuck with one maker. I don't know how profitable the PIC32 is, but there are various costs associated with supporting a line and if the sales don't continue to justify it, the line can get dropped. Which do you think has the larger sales, the PIC32 or the ARM CMx devices? Microchip may not axe any of the MCU lines. But with this merger the first two to be considered I would think would be dsPIC and PIC32.

Compared to what?

--

Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Entirely possible. The article tells a story that's very messy.

I can't make it much clearer than that. The contributed software for things like USB are abysmal. USB is like that, but this was pretty bad.

At a very slow-moving company, different revs of certain processors were quite incompatible.

I would think there were.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

I was dealing with a very slow organization, so the "many years ago" component dominates my observation.

It's hard to say, really. This is not a market in which "the market has spoken", and you even say why down the page a bit.

Right. That mentality dominated what I'd seen.

So there ya go.

Could be.

AVR. Again, I will eventually see a Cortex Mx but haven't had the privilege yet.

--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

That's one of the great things about Microchip historically though--they virtually never leave you in the lurch. You can still buy PIC17C756es from 20 years ago, that never sold well.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

After Cypress dropped their bid for Atmel, and Atmel spurned Dialog, I thought that Intel might swoop in. Intel has been making noise about getting back into the embedded market, where they once had a huge presence with the 8051 product line (and before that the 804x line. They finally gave up on the idea of the x86 architecture in embedded.

All these M&As of companies doing embedded stuff and Intel is left out.

I think I'll go do a COP8 design.

Reply to
sms

Yeah, it's getting to the point that for many projects, the cost difference between an AVR Mega 8 bit part and a low end ARM that you shrug and say "Eh, why not."

I think 8 bit parts will likely always have some market share in ultra-low cost and/or low power applications.

The Vuse electronic cigarette uses an ATiny in both the battery pack and cartomizer, cheap enough to be disposable.

Reply to
bitrex

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.