Hey, microchip bought ATMEL ....

[TucoRamirez]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/microchip-signs-deal-to-buy-atmel-1453242821

So, what is gonna be the 'future' for that?  do we will have to buy pickit4 ^^ ??

[pickit2]

It maybe a good thing if the programing language was the same for each chipsets.
I use Atmel more than the Pic one problem I have is something I could do on the pic, using say Basic-PDS,
 I find hard or impossible using C for the Atmel. I even used a Pic18xx & AT2313 to get one project out.

I have been looking at. Atmel Studio 7 features seamless one-click import of projects created in the Arduino

[metal]

at least, this link doesn't ask for registration:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/dealbook/microchip-technology-to-buy-atmel-for-nearly-3-6-billion.html?_r=0

Also, more details here: http://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/atmel-agrees-microchip-bid

[solutions]

This is NOT good - eliminated competition in what was, essentially, a duopoly in microcontrollers

[metal]

come on,, be realistic, the era of 8-bit micros is on the edge..

[crunx]

Of course, one competitor eliminated...

In any case, regarding future of 8 bits, I believe there will be certain areas where a very simple 8 bit controller may still be the optimum solution (low cost, when the performance and complexity requirements are low).

However, it is difficult to say how this will change the world. Likely pretty little, but we will see.

One possible direction for right development might be if the easy-to-use and cheap/free tools from Atmel development environment would support PIC devices in the future, as Microchip has had a high cost on their decently optimizing compiler version. And their development systems have not bee as nice as Atmels in other aspects, either.

[sam_des]

Not good..not good at all...Prefer AVRs to PICs anytime...There is simply no match for low cost & quality tools, hardware as software...MPLABX & Compilers are just a mess...
Just hope that they won't kill AVRs & SAMs & meanwhile won't affect the stocks in market...Else complete shift to M3/M0 

sam_des

[metal]

BTW, since people started writing good books about cortex-M(whatever), then we shouldn't be caring much about microchip buying atmel and moan about the competition, at some point in my life, I did hate both of them. Today I stumbled across a blog where the author has already written a book for STM32 cortex-M0, It was really thrilling because the only difficulty I had learning these chips was the lack of good books, most of them were kinda gineral and lacking full explanation of the how to use available modules. I remember when I learnt PICs and AVRs, I used to get books and read them. In case we can't find good books, then it is really difficult to learn sth like STM32F0 chips, for example.

Industry does really appreciate ARM chips for a reason, and it is for sure a good reason. When you start learning ARM chips, you will understand why the industry has moved towards using them and you will find out that 8-bit chips are extremely crippled compared to ARM chips, even for small projects. The way of thinking is different when it comes to ARM chips, and I found that the way I thought about coding for a PIC or AVR was really silly when I started learning ARM, there is a huge potential in these chips. Speaking about complexity, PIC and AVR chips were considered complex to some extent 10 years ago, but once you learn 8-bit they become a piece of cake, the same applies to ARM chips, once you learn them, you can't go back to 8-bit chips, trust me. When I learn PICs, I was able to quickly learn AVR and 8051, actually in no time.

For those complaining about SMD, there are now many cheap PCB services that are currently available, you can pick a PCB package and start acting like a real engineer. If you just want to leanr and prototype, ST is selling nucleo and discovery boards, so pick one and learn. As you can all see, PIC32 is not very famous, the same applies to AVR32, both are going to die. Indeed, atmel has been trying to kill AVR32 for some time now, more specifically, since two years.

Finally, microchip has created PIC chips that are comparable to most AVR chips, and with USB in DIP packages, so please stop pretending that you will die without your lovely lollipop AVR chips, I am not going to argue about PIC vs AVR in this forum. I don't agree with those complaining about MPLABX, there is nothing wrong with it, I worked with both, MPLABX and Atmel Studio 6.x and 7.x, both are excellent.

Book details are here for those interested.

[bigtoy]

Personally, I think it's a GREAT move for Microchip. The Cortex stuff is taking over the world, and Microchip's PIC stuff is losing market share to them. Particularly for PIC32 - I don't know anyone using PIC32; all the companies I know are using ARM Cortex-M various flavors for 32 bit microcontrollers. At my work we recently had a Microchip guy come and talk to us about PIC16 options for a new project we're starting on. Short story - they had nothing. Meanwhile, Atmel has some great Cortex-M MCUs, plus they have an ARM-A5. Forget about AVR vs PIC; that's the past. Think about the future. This is a great move to jumpstart Microchip into a new, and badly overdue, product line.

[TucoRamirez]

Personally, I think it's a GREAT move for Microchip. The Cortex stuff is taking over the world, and Microchip's PIC stuff is losing market share to them. Particularly for PIC32 - I don't know anyone using PIC32; all the companies I know are using ARM Cortex-M various flavors for 32 bit microcontrollers. At my work we recently had a Microchip guy come and talk to us about PIC16 options for a new project we're starting on. Short story - they had nothing. Meanwhile, Atmel has some great Cortex-M MCUs, plus they have an ARM-A5. Forget about AVR vs PIC; that's the past. Think about the future. This is a great move to jumpstart Microchip into a new, and badly overdue, product line.

BTW  just as a funny note,  Weller uses PIC32MX on some of its products ...  like the WX series ^^   ... i was expecting an ARM inside,in fact, the day i teared offf "accidentally"

[metal]

ironically, if microchip has made ARM chips earlier, we would have all been using it by now :- )
Microchip done wrong when they looked for competing with AVR32 and ARM chips, they should have bought a small ARM business like TI did when they bought stellary and never wasted time on PIC32. Atmel realized that sooner than microchip, but at the same time, Atmel dev boards were more expensive than ST and Freescale, so finally the latter two companies won, mostly ST.

[Gallymimu]

Ya know, I've had dinner with Steve Sanghi twice.  I've asked him about MIPS vs ARM and why they let Arduino happen.  He stands pretty firmly behind both decisions!

But... I bet us engineers know better that the guys running these companies right?

I'm a PIC fanboi and frankly I get a kick out of the richness of peripherals on the tiny 8 bit processors that can do heavy lifting just because they have cool hardware built in.

I wish Microchip had a dev environment as nice as visual studio though!

[pickit2]

I wish Microchip had a dev environment as nice as visual studio though!

That's what I'm hoping they take the Atmel VS tools and use them for pics.
one dev environment for both devices.

[LithiumOverdosE]

I doubt such merge of two environments will happen any time soon.
MCHP is now pushing the damn Code Configurator which doesn't allow direct access to the entire peripheral libraries source code.
I'm not sure how such policy is compatible with Atmel policy of allowing access to virtually all sources.

[metal]

things can simply change with time. Seems steve eventually knew that the merge will happen, that's why he's supporting microchip silly actions.

[Gallymimu]

I doubt such merge of two environments will happen any time soon.
MCHP is now pushing the damn Code Configurator which doesn't allow direct access to the entire peripheral libraries source code.
I'm not sure how such policy is compatible with Atmel policy of allowing access to virtually all sources.

I don't think that's accurate.  I use the code configuration all the time. and when it doesn't do what I want, I simply use normal libraries, and when that doesn't work or is too slow, I go lower and lower down to the register level.  I'm not sure what case you are talking about where you don't have access to something.

This might be stupid, but you know you have to install the peripheral libraries separately from the compiler now right?  That hung me up a few times when the first separated the packages.

Posted on: January 31, 2016, 05:47:10 17:47 - Automerged

I doubt such merge of two environments will happen any time soon.
MCHP is now pushing the damn Code Configurator which doesn't allow direct access to the entire peripheral libraries source code.
I'm not sure how such policy is compatible with Atmel policy of allowing access to virtually all sources.

I actually talked to them (Microchip) about this last week.  They have NO idea what they are going to do .  They did mention that the team that build MPLABX has a lot of pride around that IDE....

[ehnonymouse]

come on,, be realistic, the era of 8-bit micros is on the edge..

I don't see that. We use PIC10F devices in SOT23-6 packages to do fairly simple tasks. 12Fs in their SO-8 package are also very useful for tasks like Peltier control.

[metal]

You are right in this case :- )

nevertheless, STM32F0-series is the famous 32-cents for 32-bit line of MCU from the STM32 portfolio. It is designed to have a street price able to compete with 8/16-bit MCUs from other vendors, offering a more advanced and powerful platform.
Are you using ASM with these SOT23-6 packages?

[TucoRamirez]

  if labcenter could make at least the model of the STM32F030 20pins mcu i will kick all the mplab stuff to the recycle bin :p

[metal]

You can buy any of these and get yourself started :- )
Using proteus shouldn't introduce an obstacle for you, pay attention to the fact that labcenter did not involve themselves in creating ARM models because buying dev kits is much cheaper than buying a proteus license.

[ehnonymouse]

You are right in this case :- )

nevertheless, STM32F0-series is the famous 32-cents for 32-bit line of MCU from the STM32 portfolio. It is designed to have a street price able to compete with 8/16-bit MCUs from other vendors, offering a more advanced and powerful platform.
Are you using ASM with these SOT23-6 packages?

No, we're using the Microchip compiler. As far as the STM32F0 goes, the smallest package is 20 pins (as far as I can see) which is not ideal for us.

[TucoRamirez]

You can buy any of these and get yourself started :- )
Using proteus shouldn't introduce an obstacle for you, pay attention to the fact that labcenter did not involve themselves in creating ARM models because buying dev kits is much cheaper than buying a proteus license.

Good point !  I forgot that i'm supposed to pay for a licence ^^ !! Yes i have nucleo boards  (STM32L1)  but  sometimes when i'm in the bed, looong bus or  train (yep, i have problems to sleep in fact...), is nice to have a virtual "whatever" to play with - i get that bad habit with pics and proteus in fact - .  Anyway, excepting off cours i2c, [for an unexpected reason the stdperiphlib initialization doesnt work for me, but when i do it in barebone registers is fine on my stm32L1 ) , i'll ask for guidelines in the corresponding topic... ].  but for low pinout/ uncomplicated  applications, i'm still stick on pic.         


BTW, it's me or STMicroelectronics have a weird way to write datasheets, compared to microchip ?  I found some aspects in the reference manual explained in a weird way, to a point that is better to read the .C file of a periph lib to understand better some events and flagging or calculations not xplicitely presented.

[h0nk]

BTW, it's me or STMicroelectronics have a weird way to write datasheets, compared to microchip ?

The datasheets and manuals are written in France.

You will notice the same style in the book "Assembly Language Programming ARM Cortex-M3"
written by Vincent Mahout.

When You take part in a ST-Event You may also notice that they pronounce
debugger as debügger :-)


Best Regards

[metal]

ST is planning to rewrite all datasheets and manuals.

You can just start using CubeMX. It will do most of the initialization work for you. It helped me understand the concepts and sequence of initialization.

[Gallymimu]

You are right in this case :- )

nevertheless, STM32F0-series is the famous 32-cents for 32-bit line of MCU from the STM32 portfolio. It is designed to have a street price able to compete with 8/16-bit MCUs from other vendors, offering a more advanced and powerful platform.
Are you using ASM with these SOT23-6 packages?

well there are always going to be fanboy's.  I am a microchip fanboy and you won't convince me that an STM32 is cooler than a pic10F or cooler than a PIC16F1XXX series part.