AVR And PIC whats the diferance

[dmkmedia]

im just starting to look at pic micro controllers i have a Mini Pro Pic programmer and my Pic Microcontrollers have not been delivered yet so i tried inserting a At mega chip from a Arduino and it read it ok and saved the image erased it and wrote it back again

so i want to know

1 What is the difference between an AVR chip and a PIC chip
2 Can I get a Pic Chip and Write the Arduino Image BIN File On It

Sorry if i seem a bit thick but im just starting out on my journey from moving from arduino to pic chips 

[Ammar]

1. Good question. They are different companies. AVR is made by Atmel, and PIC is made by microchip. Although I think I recall someone saying that Microchip has bought out Atmel, so who knows what the future holds. They use different architectures and have different instruction sets, but they do the same things. People will have their preference either way depending on their design requirements.

2. Certainly not. PICs have a different instruction set, they use a different machine "language" to operate. I hope that makes sense.

[ray-san]

[Brutte]

Ad1. Any effort made so far?
Ad2. Yes, you can. But it most likely won't work. AFAIK the only compatible thing in this world is that you can use PICkit2 to program AVRs via ISP with avrdude.

[shteii01]

1.  Different architectures.

2.  AVR is cheaper to learn.

[danmcb]

Just different families of chips with different architectures. they will both do a whole lot of stuff, and have their followers and detractors. Just choose one and dig in. Getting the cheapest dev kit together will probably be the decider, but they are both great families of devices.

[onesixright]

FWIW: Microchip bought Atmel.

http://www.microchip.com/docs/default-source/announcements-documents/mchp-completes-atml-acquisition-and-provides-update-on-its-q4fy16.pdf

[Vtile]

A simple comparison would be comparing a MAC(=apple) and PC (I don't know which is which) both do pretty much the same thing, in pretty same way. Still they both need a different programs. They might have different type of connectors and they might be internally totally different. Some people like MACs and some people like PCs.

Same goes with PIC and AVR. Pic were "the thing", before Arduino made the AVR popular around hobbyists.

[jaromir]

Not sure why, but I smell either off-topic or flamewar discussion here.

[Vtile]

Not sure why, but I smell either off-topic or flamewar discussion here.

It is because you have PIC mentioned in your signature.   

[Cliff Matthews]

Not sure why, but I smell either off-topic or flamewar discussion here.

Nah... The deed's done, they're both under the same roof. However, one could compare PSoC (bought my sons some 5LP's at $10)
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cypress-semiconductor-corp/CY8CKIT-059/428-3390-ND/5184557
http://www.cypress.com/?docID=49437   

[eblc1388]

You will discover that most people here learn and be able to use both. There is a best choice among using which of these two regarding a particular project.

It doesn't hurt to know how to use both. My personal experience is learning the second one would only take about one quarter of the time to that of the first.

The question is which architecture to start first?

[jaromir]

It is because you have PIC mentioned in your signature.   

I wish I knew that before... I would remove the offending three letters from my signature and all flamewars would be gone.

But seriously, this topic has been discussed "a few times" here, simple search revealed this
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/pic-and-avr-thinking-of-a-switch-but-need-more-info/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/avr-or-pic/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/microcontroller-newbie-needs-some-advice-re-pics-and-avrs/msg302510/#msg302510
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/which-is-more-capable-8-bit-avr-40-pin-dip-or-32-bit-pic-24-pin-dip/msg738882/#msg738882
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/pic-or-avr-microcontrollers/msg599520/#msg599520
Perhaps OP could find relevant info there - or at least see how similar discussions ends up.

[ray-san]

The atmels has one advantage (at least for me). You can optain an atmel on these arduino boards. I don't like the arduino "IDE", and i don't use it. I use atmel studio or a simple text editor to write my code, but the boards are great (notably the arduino micro board). They come with all the stuff you need (a voltage regulator, a crystal oscillator, and a uart to usb converter).
You can whack this board into a breadboard, flash your code and everything works fine, which makes life much easyer.