AVR looking weak against TI and Cygnal

Greetings:

Of course we haven't seen them yet, but when 25MHz MSP430s come along, with their fast 12-bit A/D and D/A capabilities, combined with the Cygnal 100MIPS 8051 derivatives with fast 12-bit A/D and D/A as well, the AVR with its 16MIPS and only 10-bit A/D slow 15ksps with no dedicated D/A hardware, is looking a bit on the meager side.

Is Atmel going to try to compete with these Cygnal and TI offerings (even at 8MHz, the 16-bit MSP430 core is of similar performance to the

16 MHz AVRs, lower power, and much better analog IO).

I'd really like to see some 33-40MHz AVR offerings, and some with substantially improved A/D like 12-bit 100ksps, and some with 2 12-bit DAC channels.

Whadaya think? What is Atmel's plan regarding what part of the uC market they want the AVR to occupy? Do they want it to be a low-power (though higher than MSP430) mid-performance uC only, or to be able to compete on all tiers?

Good day!

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Christopher R. Carlen
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Chris Carlen
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There is also the Philips LPC2100 ARM family: very easy to use, 60 MHz operation (54 MIPS), 32 bits, plenty of I/Os, lots of peripherals, and < $10.

Leon

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Leon Heller, G1HSM
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Leon Heller

Cygnal have 1MSPS 16 bit ADC, and have 24 bit ADC comming. As well as the MSP430, TI also have the [BurrBrown] MSC12xx family, with 24 bit ADCs, and 16 bit DACs. Also from TI, are sub $10 FLASH DSPs, with 12 bit/6MSPS ADCs

High performance Analog is non-trivial, and tends to come only from companies with a proven track record in ADC designs.

Raw MHz is less a challenge, and tends to come from normal shrink timelines and/or more efficent FLASH Bandwidth design.

Atmel _do_ have a niche in GHz ADCs, but I'm not sure you'd paste one of those next to a AVR :)

(Don't forget the up to 64K Bytes of RAM..) Certainly these Philips & TI 32 bit offerings will put real pressure on the upper end of 64-128K byte AVRs/PICs in the long term.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

I think one salient point of the Cygnal (and other) devices is their membership in the ubiquitous 8051 family, with many suppliers available.

The problem with the MSP430 (and others) is their single supplier condition. I think TI would do well to license the designs to other manufacturers, and aim for a similar wide family.

We never had any qualms in the old days about using the 8080,

8086, 8088, 8049, 8051, z80, 6502 and derivatives therefrom, because multiple suppliers were always available. However the Motorola competition (6800, 6808, 68000) fell because of availability.
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Chuck F (cbfalconer@yahoo.com) (cbfalconer@worldnet.att.net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
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CBFalconer

where did you get this quote? EUR 12 (approx. $15) is what we get from our distributor for 250 pcs tray (6-8 weeks for delivery outch!) EUR 15 (approx. $20) for smaller quantities

also you can add: immature chips (probably with lot of bugs on the first releases - philips is hurrying to throw on the market chip but they still have no completely datasheets written), no code protection scheme i.e. everybody can copy your design ... at this point LPC2100 is still great entry level for learning ARM7 architecture, assemler etc, but IMO for now can't be considered for any serious job

Best regards Tsvetan

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PCB prototypes for $26 at http://run.to/pcb(http://www.olimex.com/pcb)
Development boards for PIC, AVR and MSP430 
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Tsvetan Usunov

I paid 7.75 GBP each (about $13) for 20 off LPC2106 from my distributor: Silica/Avnet, here in the UK. The pound is strong against the dollar at present, which helps. I think the '2104 is under $10 in quantity, here. How about me buying your chips here and selling them on to you, I can probably get 100 pcs immediately. 8-)

It's still a very nice chip, and should prove *very* popular, IMHO.

Leon

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Leon Heller, G1HSM
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Leon Heller

Silica have no rep for Bulgaria, I sent request to the quoted office in Slovenia on their web page and never got reply, same is with Arrow which is also quoted as their distributor, it seems that Philips have no enough stock to cover even the initial interest they made with the LPC2100 buzz.

Best regards Tsvetan

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PCB prototypes for $26 at http://run.to/pcb(http://www.olimex.com/pcb)
Development boards for PIC, AVR and MSP430 
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Tsvetan Usunov

I think the weak dollar would make it cheaper in the states. The Philips distributor I use quoted me in the $7.50 (USD) range for the 2106 at one point. Plus the FAEs are drooling over this part, therefore I have found them quick to respond and unsually knowledgeable about it...

Here's their page:

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--Keith

Reply to
Keith Brafford

I'll throw some more fat onto the fire. Have y'all looked at the Analog Devices Blackfin

531/532/533 family? 16-bit fixed point processing, 32-bit integer ops, very low power capabilities (dynamic core voltage and PLL settings), and a
Reply to
Keith Brafford

I forgot to mention that the dev kits for the BF533 are $99 because of some special, so now's a good time to check them out, if one were interested...

--Keith

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Keith Brafford

I think you should mention that thsy ONLY come in BGA packages.

Reply to
hamilton

The 533 comes only in a BGA package, true, but the 300MHz flavors of the 531 and 532 are available in an LQFP package.

--Keith

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Keith Brafford

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