Author Topic: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL  (Read 40808 times)

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Online nctnico

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #100 on: March 01, 2016, 05:48:20 pm »
Still the analog parts from Microchip perform very poor when compared to those from A- brands like Texas Instruments, Analog devices or Linear technology. For example a 12 bit ADC from Microchip can have a 8LSB error where an ADC from an A-brand typically has an error of 1LSB or less. What is the price per effective number of bits?
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Offline westfw

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #101 on: March 01, 2016, 05:55:53 pm »
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Microchip has historically been MUCH more profitable, though.
How's that possible if Atmel is supposed to be "better"? (which I don't believe)
I don't believe it either (I mean, I like the AVR better than the 8-bit PICs, but that's pretty minor when it comes to overall evaluation of the companies.)
But the profitability question is pretty easy: Atmel, LONG ago, decided  that Microchip was their chief competitor, so their pretty much have to be price-competitive with the Microchip chips, even if they cost more to make.  Throw in some bad decisions about whether, how many, and where to buy fabs, and an occasional internal executive management conflict, and it's pretty easy for a company with a better product to have lower profits.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/business/11norris.html?_r=0 )
 

Offline Simon

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #102 on: March 01, 2016, 06:37:38 pm »
Still the analog parts from Microchip perform very poor when compared to those from A- brands like Texas Instruments, Analog devices or Linear technology. For example a 12 bit ADC from Microchip can have a 8LSB error where an ADC from an A-brand typically has an error of 1LSB or less. What is the price per effective number of bits?

Ah, let me guess, microchip is cheaper, you make my point beautifully......... cheaper products maybe shit but cheaper, mre successful for some.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #103 on: March 01, 2016, 07:14:56 pm »
Still the analog parts from Microchip perform very poor when compared to those from A- brands like Texas Instruments, Analog devices or Linear technology. For example a 12 bit ADC from Microchip can have a 8LSB error where an ADC from an A-brand typically has an error of 1LSB or less. What is the price per effective number of bits?
Ah, let me guess, microchip is cheaper, you make my point beautifully......... cheaper products maybe shit but cheaper, mre successful for some.
You are missing the point... Unless you are designing a high volume product (>10k) the cost of engineering is dominating the costs. Choosing a better chip helps to shorten design time and leaves room for error. Over the years (decades) Atmel and Microchip products presented me with some nasty surprises needing more engineering effort compared to using an A-brand chip. All in all I have found that going for the cheapest parts is more expensive in the long run.
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Offline Simon

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #104 on: March 01, 2016, 07:39:30 pm »
yes, so what you are saying is that large volume products use the cheaper parts as the savings overcome the extra cost. so that may make microchip a better option for some and maybe successful in some peoples eyes. Just because Atmel is smaller I don't think it means their products are bad. As we all know the PIC is an old design, why should the more modern and efficient product be discarded ?

If microchip abolish Atmel parts I will switch elsewhere altogether.
 

Offline donotdespisethesnake

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #105 on: March 01, 2016, 08:26:41 pm »
The latest round of takeovers is a little different to others. These are not companies on a stock market tear borrowing billions, or needing to eliminate competitors. They are companies sitting on a pile of cash, and with low interest rates, and not much growth in the market, looking to expand through acquisitions. Of course, there is bound to be some consolidation, and where there is overlap roadmaps will be frozen or merged.

But there is no need for the newly merged companies to go on a big cost cutting exercise. They will want to keep as many products and customers as possible. So I think it likely that most of the AVR range will survive, and quite possibly a lot of the Atmel range in general. It will be branded Microchip though. Microchip did well acquiring a legacy 8 bit chip design and building a good support and supply chain, so they might repeat that with AVR.
Bob
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Offline Simon

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #106 on: March 01, 2016, 08:33:07 pm »
Microchip did well acquiring a legacy 8 bit chip design and building a good support and supply chain, so they might repeat that with AVR.

Hang on, do you mean microchip bought the architecture ? no wonder it's old hat. the atmel parts exist because two students came up with an inovative design and sold it to a company willing to take it on. some difference fom a company buying some old hat design and pretending decades later that it's the latest and greatest.
 

Offline Len

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #107 on: March 01, 2016, 08:44:45 pm »
Hang on, do you mean microchip bought the architecture ?

No, Microchip was formed when General Instrument spun off their chip-making division (including the PIC line) into a separate company.
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Offline Simon

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #108 on: March 01, 2016, 08:45:34 pm »
but it's a very old design then, they have no bothered to make anything better since.
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #109 on: March 01, 2016, 11:38:25 pm »
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16F883
Is essentially obsolete by now. PIC still makes a lot of chips that are no longer relevant for current design. They still sell them... at higher cost for the people that can't be bothered to migrate.

16F1936 has twice the stack depth, wider supply voltage range of operation, an extended instruction set, internall PLL, and a lot of additional features. And it's cheaper. This has been the case for at least the past 4-5 years, I think. It looks like 883 was one of the earlier chips to have been introduced with the new nanowatt technology. But right on the heels came many other advancements of the enhanced midrange chips. If you ever want to use an 8 bit PIC, use the microchip website tools to start looking for the best match. And if the part number doesn't start with a "1", doublecheck your selection.

One of the only places 883 appears to have an advantage is standy current of 50nA vs 100nA.

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but it's a very old design then, they have no bothered to make anything better since.
The important thing for me, is the support and tools and supply chain. I could care less about innovation in the silicon. I want the parts to be available now and in the future, at a good price, in quantities small or large. I want complete and consistent documentation. I want a working tool chain and good, inexpensive or even free dev tools.

I honestly wouldn't be worried at all about AVR lineup. I think Microchip will improve AVR, if anything.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2016, 11:51:18 pm by KL27x »
 

Offline NivagSwerdna

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #110 on: March 01, 2016, 11:51:03 pm »
On a side note...

Why on earth does Microchip have so many parts!  Couldn't they just put all the functions into a mother of all PICs and then allow you to disable/enable the peripherals?

When they add in the Atmel parts... they will have even more.... Mind blowing.
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #111 on: March 01, 2016, 11:52:10 pm »
It is called product life cycle mgmt.

Microchip realized, correctly, that the 8bit mkt will continue to shrink, soon to a point of not being able to support multiple players. So consolidation is the way to go. They will cut staff across the board, and cross sell like crazy, in order to pay for the premium they laid for atmel.

So in a sense the winners here are atmel shareholders and microchip mgmt.

The fact that no one puts up an anti trust complaint about the transactions speaks volume about mkts view of the prospect for 8bit mcus.

8bit used to be a meaningful business for us from a revenue perspective. But once we factored the costs to support that revenue, we concluded that it was not the best use of our resources and we cut it like a hot potato.  Looking back I still admires the foresight we had in that decision, :)
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Offline KL27x

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #112 on: March 02, 2016, 12:02:02 am »
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Why on earth does Microchip have so many parts!
I think this is part of their financial success.
1. They have the web tools and supply chain sorted out for maintaining a huge number of parts. It is easy to find the part you might need.
2. NRE costs. They are able to sell "obsolete" chips for a higher cost compared to better devices. As long as people are willing to pay, why not sell them what they want? As long as they are offering pin-4-pin compatible devices that are better and cheaper, no one will complain about a modest price hike.

The fact they still supply stuff that was obsolete 10 years ago is pretty awesome... If you're willing to pay 4X as much for 1/4 the device, that's your call.

The more familiar you are with PICs, the less attached you get to individual devices. The pinout and documentation and header files are very consistent within a family. They are very interchangeable. Going back 10+ years. They do a very good job of maintaining this consistency.
« Last Edit: March 02, 2016, 12:15:52 am by KL27x »
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #113 on: March 02, 2016, 12:06:16 am »
It is also due to their selling to price sensitive buyers so have the right parts with the right and minimum combinations of features allow them the lowest possible prices.

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Offline KL27x

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #114 on: March 02, 2016, 12:22:26 am »
^ Yes, this too. 5 years ago, I would have prioritized this first, and the other second part second or not-at-all.

What I realize after living through the obscolescence of devices is the significance of price differences going the opposite way.

Microchip seems to have found a good balance. They realize not all people pay more (or even as much) just to use the latest and greatest chip, because it comes with the cost of having to RTFM and deal with possibility of errata. Their price structure is balanced to motivate enough people to migrate to the newer technology, paying for the R&D and new silicon assembly lines with the sales of older chips at increasingly higher cost before shutting down shop. They seem to know what they're doing.

Having a "flagship" chip with everything is great, but in 3 years, there will be new and better features, and the early adopters that chase after the flagships are going to jump ship to the new chip. Cheap bastards that buy stuff because it's cheap are going to hold off on migration, because they don't care about new features and they don't want to pay NRE. But they'll get your money by increasing your cost 3 cents at a time.:)
« Last Edit: March 02, 2016, 12:33:35 am by KL27x »
 

Offline westfw

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #115 on: March 02, 2016, 01:18:24 am »
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but it's a very old design then, [microchip] have no bothered to make anything better since.
huh?  PIC18, PIC24, PIC30, PIC33, PIC32 are all "new and better" than what they started with.  Shucks; AFAIK what they started with was the 40pin PIC17 chips in expensive UV-erasable packages, so you can add "small package microcontrollers" to their list of "innovations", along with "aggressive use of OTP and electrically erasable program memory" (remember the PIC16C84?  People (not smart people) are still using them (well, 16f84s, anyway.  Still sold.)  The revolutionized dealing with the hobby market as well - I could buy PICs from dealers like digikey or parallax back when Atmel chips were only available through "real electronics distributors."  (yeah, that was back before digilkey qualified as a "real distributor.")

There are reasons to dislike Microchip.   There are reasons to dislike Atmel.  But between the two of them, they've pretty much OWNED the "small microcontroller" market, and it's somewhat natural that they merge...
 


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