Atmel Bought by Microchip

Not sure how you can test I/Os in parallel when one of the things you need to test is that they aren't shorted. All I know is from the guy who worked there and had the testers. I seem to recall he went through the math verbally showing that you need to test low priced parts pretty damn fast!

You write checkerboards. For peripherals, operate more than one at a time.

Sure but not the point. I'm not saying that test isn't important but it doesn't scale linearly with I/O. It's pretty trivial to check a hundred I/Os for opens and shorts.

Do you know what is adjacent to what inside the chip? Even in a memory a checkerboard is not sufficient.

No one said it was linear, just that it is monotonic. To check I/Os takes a *lot* more than checking for shorts. They need to verify the data sheet info.

Oh, good grief/ The designer knows! Have you ever done VLSI test?

I/O is a trivial part of test. Think!

Intel dropped the ball when they gave up the xScale ARM line to focus on x86 architecture from Pentium to Atom to Quark.

Intel is trying to force themselves into the embedded market with the Galileo Arduino-like platform with the Quark Chip, and the Edison SoC (system on chip). But I see nobody really adopting that despite familiarity and comfort with the x86 architecture.

Intel does not seem to collaborate with others. All the other chip makers collaborate or are consortiums, particularly ARM since it's fabless: the core is licensed to others.

The latest Intel show-n-tell I attended seemed rather arrogant: they want the entire vertical market from embedded portable device to router to server and everything in between. No need to play nice with others.

Intel hasn't done *anything* right except X86 (and there is some argument here, too).

You got that right. Every time I've had a presentation from Intel it's been by the most arrogant people imaginable. Their pricing model is based on X86, as well. A model that doesn't allow their partner to make a profit.

Yep. That's all I've seen from them, too, and I'm not in the IT market.

intel collaborated with AMD in the 80s and that is still costing them.

Because the more familiar you are with the x86 architecture, the less comfortable you are with it.

It could be argued that they'd be nowhere without AMD.

Il 29/06/2016 00:55, rickman ha scritto:

I was a fan of Atmel AVRs and SAM D2x with all the ecosystem (Atmel Studio 7, Atmel Software Framework, free compilers, ...).

However I think Microchip purchased Atmel to kill it. Atmel online support doesn't work anymore. Atmel MCU prices seem increasing.

Too bad, I think I'll switch to ST and/or NXP.

Whose online support *does* work? I can't run synthesis in the latest update of the Lattice tools and support can't even seem to understand a simple question of "what does error code 3 mean"?

The AVR architecture isn't all that great and the framework is somewhat less great. AVR peripherals are quite nice, though.

"It" meaning Atmel? Nope. Meaning "AVR", perhaps (to probably). THe larger PICs are dead, IMO. A bit late. Though MicroChip is smart enough to make money where there is money to be made.

To spite your face?

Before Atmel was bought from Microchip, I contacted directly Atmel support (through my Atmel section of their website, "Open a support case") and some guys helped me. The answers arrived about after 2-3 working days.

Now it seems the Atmel support can't be contacted anymore.

I worked with PIC and AVR and IMHO AVR is much better.

They aren't so great, but usable. Anyway you can use gcc compiler (with avr-libc) with your preferred tool.

Yes.

Microchip will kill AVR and many things related to Atmel: free gcc compilers and tools, low cost debugger/programmers, mainly low cost devices.

I don't like Microchip support, tools, technical supporto, sales approach. Nothing.

Talk about damning with faint praise...

Me thinks, you resemble this to the which is better Cyanide or Arsenic...

Actually, I don't think AVR is all that bad. The lack of 16 bit operations is a PITA, but the gcc port is well done. Maybe the compilers for PIC have improved (yikes, it's been 10 years since I compated AVR and PIC), but the PIC compilers used to be dreadful.

I just struck me that saying something is better than PIC is like saying somerthing is "more fun than passing a kidney stone".

The yardstick these days for small/cheap MCUs is probably Cortex-M0 -- or even the venerable MSP430.

There are times when listening to a boring friend I wish I would get a kidney stone... You never half to apologize when you are passing a kidney stone.

I assume you "bought _by_".

That's to be expected in such an upheaval. MicroChip support has been far better than Atmel though, as a large (and bleading edge) customer I could get hold of someone in Atmel anytime I needed it (not always a "good" answer).