Author Topic: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL  (Read 40814 times)

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Offline ali_asadzadehTopic starter

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ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« on: January 23, 2016, 02:34:29 pm »
Hi,
The news is the war is over. So what's your ideas?
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Offline legacy

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2016, 02:50:59 pm »
PIC is going to have an ARM core, I am not enthusiastic, but I think it's good  :-+
I wonder if Atmel Studio and MPLAB X IDE are going to have a mash up  :-//
 

Offline CM800

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2016, 03:29:16 pm »
PIC is going to have an ARM core, I am not enthusiastic, but I think it's good  :-+
I wonder if Atmel Studio and MPLAB X IDE are going to have a mash up  :-//

I hope not, I rather like the current edition of Atmel Studio.
 

Offline andre_teprom

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2016, 04:07:52 pm »
PIC is going to have an ARM core, I am not enthusiastic, but I think it's good
In certain way Microchip was one of the few companies that was still offering attractive products with their proprietary architecture, and now seems like the real winner is the ARM holding. This will impoverish the range of state of the art options for developers.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2016, 05:11:08 pm »
PIC is going to have an ARM core, I am not enthusiastic, but I think it's good
In certain way Microchip was one of the few companies that was still offering attractive products with their proprietary architecture, and now seems like the real winner is the ARM holding. This will impoverish the range of state of the art options for developers.
Microchip and state-of-the-art really don't go together! One cheap crap company bought another cheap crap company in an attempt to consolidate their (obviously) shrinking cheap crap market share. If there ever was a war between Microchip and Atmel then it is safe to say they killed each other. A few years ago I got lots of angry comments when I told people PIC is crap and they should look at ARM. Those days are long gone!
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Offline c4757p

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2016, 05:21:48 pm »
I think we might have different definitions of both "cheap" and "crap"...though that sentence wins amusingly-grumpy points from me at least ;)
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Offline AlxDroidDev

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2016, 05:34:50 pm »
This will impoverish the range of state of the art options for developers.

Which are...?

PIC is far from being state-of-the-art, and AVR's hardly count as cutting edge technology.

I like AVRs, but only because they are so damn easy to program and everything fit together nicely. Performance-wise ARMs have won the battle years ago. If it weren't for Arduino making AVRs so popular, they'd be long gone.

A few years ago I got lots of angry comments when I told people PIC is crap and they should look at ARM. Those days are long gone!

I have the same opinion, but I prefer to keep it to myself not to get insulted. I just laugh silently at people who defend PICs so adamantely.

Back on topic, this deal needed 2 things to happen:
- Atmel had to come up with $137M to pay Dialog - the previous bidder - as a termionation fee. EETimes reports that Atmel paid this value sometime this week.

- Atmel stockholders need to approve the deal. I believe their next meeting is in March, and only then this deal can be effectively closed. Since Microcrap is offering more for each stock than its trading price, I see no problem in the stockholders approving the deal.

It's hard to tell what will become of this new company. I find it very unfortunate that Atmel had to be sold, but that's the way it goes.
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Offline andre_teprom

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2016, 06:01:38 pm »
PIC is far from being state-of-the-art

We must not only consider the state-of-the-art some technology, but also a product itself. Microchip in fact, was never an undertaking of innovative solutions, and even for me, remotely would be my choice for new projects, but at least the 16F family has fulfilled its purpose 10 years ago to offer an easy uC to use, which was confirmed by the expressive public achieved .

I'm apart from the merit of judging their portfolio, it's not my intention to discuss the predicates of each one, but just highlight the fact which deserves our attention is that once again we're undergoing to another fusion, whose natural denouement is to dismiss half of both design houses, and and slow the development of new products, the absence of significant competition at the same niche.
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Offline MT

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2016, 06:20:12 pm »
What about crap cheap? I really wonder what's going to happen with MPLABx and Atmel Studio!?!
 

Online bingo600

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2016, 06:55:59 pm »
I have a few xmega dev-boards lying around, waiting for some experience.
But with this confirmed, i'll drop learning xmegas.

I'll concentrate on moving my new designs100% to Arm.
ST are currently my favorite. But i do like some of the NXP's also.

I'll still do some AVR Mega stuff , as i do like them.

But i'm heading for Arm

/Bingo
 

Offline diyaudio

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2016, 07:36:07 pm »
Hi,
The news is the war is over. So what's your ideas?
They better fix their shit slow PK3, I just spent whole day debugging and having to use Visual Studio to debug my C code what a bloody fail, I will never use a PIC again, I was attracted to their simplicity.. honey pot.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2016, 07:37:57 pm by diyaudio »
 

Offline coppice

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2016, 07:43:27 pm »
This will impoverish the range of state of the art options for developers.
Microchip aren't in the business of pushing the state of the art. Their main successes are in selling fairly simple MCUs and analogue parts, backed by really good service. Service is a big deal in their sector of the market. Atmel has a number of things which are state of the art. We'll have to see how that plays out.
 

Offline legacy

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2016, 08:12:09 pm »
Microchip and state-of-the-art really don't go together! One cheap crap company bought another cheap crap company in an attempt to consolidate their (obviously) shrinking cheap crap market share. If there ever was a war between Microchip and Atmel then it is safe to say they killed each other. A few years ago I got lots of angry comments when I told people PIC is crap and they should look at ARM. Those days are long gone!

you are right!
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2016, 08:29:04 pm »
If this merger does lead to the demise of Mplab X, and a restructuring of Microchip's whole software strategy, there is some good in it.

Quote
This will impoverish the range of state of the art options for developers.

Agreed. More choices are always better.
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Offline chris_leyson

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2016, 09:24:13 pm »
I tend to agree with a lot of the posts, Microchip are not innovators. Started out as General Instrument Microelectronics and changed their name to Microchip in '87. I remember fixing a door bell based on a 28 pin GI PIC1657 it was NMOS, that's the only GI PIC16xx part I've ever seen.

It took Microchip decades to sort out the read modify write bug on port pins and try driving WS8212B leds with the old SPI peripheral, FAIL, that 1-bit delay scews things up big time, they havn't got a clue about buffers. Maybe the Microchip designers should learn HDL or logic at the very least. However, the enhanced SPI peripheral works  only in multiples of 8-bits, FAIL. Had to bit-bash in the end.

Tried using MX32 parts recently and Harmony, FAIL. I need to turn all of the interrupts off and back on, every macro I tried failed, yep macro not function because it's not functional, I even looked through the assembler and there was no code !!. So you haven't written it then guys, Harmony = FAIL. Why the hell would you abstract C to something that doesn't work.

Anyway, long story short, changed the MX32 to something older, DsPIC32.. Now I can program in C, plus inline assembler where needed, using the XC16 compiler. That works, well it worked on the rats nest breadboard, and two out of three production boards.
Seems that not all DsPICs will run at 40Mips, had to tweak down to 30Mips, now it works.

Microchip = crap hardware and crap software and now they aquire Atmel, I hope they fire all the Microchip engineers, I just wish it was the other way around  :-BROKE



 

Offline AlxDroidDev

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #15 on: January 23, 2016, 10:06:39 pm »
PIC is far from being state-of-the-art

We must not only consider the state-of-the-art some technology, but also a product itself. Microchip in fact, was never an undertaking of innovative solutions, and even for me, remotely would be my choice for new projects, but at least the 16F family has fulfilled its purpose 10 years ago to offer an easy uC to use, which was confirmed by the expressive public achieved .

I'm apart from the merit of judging their portfolio, it's not my intention to discuss the predicates of each one, but just highlight the fact which deserves our attention is that once again we're undergoing to another fusion, whose natural denouement is to dismiss half of both design houses, and and slow the development of new products, the absence of significant competition at the same niche.

On that we agree (I still disagree on the "state-of-the-art" bit, though!) , and I posted something along the same lines in the other topic about this acquisition. This *might* have an impact on our choices of suppliers. PIC and AVRs have historically been the 2 competing sides for hobbists, and now both will belong to the same manufacturer, who will be able to set prices as it seems fit.

IMHO, this acquisition only strengthens the ARM foothold on the uC marketplace. Anyone shopping for 32-bit uCs will have the choices of:

- competing 32-bit architectures supplied by the same manufacturer (32F vs. Atmel`s 32 bit solutions)
- ARM, with its vast choices of suppliers, also including the one above

It's hard to tell what this new company is gonna do about the 2 competing standards, but I hope they release some info soon, because people are getting impatient. Honestly, I think it would be quite dumb of Microchip to dump either one (AVR or PIC), because I think both are still quite profitable products. They might streamline their product lines ' though, because some of the products might be redundant (specially analog products) in the new company.

Honestly, I hope the suits behind this think smart and don't forget about about us hobbists, and it all works out for the best for everyone.
"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." (Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
 

Offline andre_teprom

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #16 on: January 23, 2016, 10:51:40 pm »
Honestly, I hope the suits behind this think smart and don't forget about about us hobbists

The today's hobbyists may be the tomorrow's professionals. Both companies apparently shared this same standpoint on their business, and deservedly got their part on the marketplace. As you, hopefully that the things don't change much.
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Offline Howardlong

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #17 on: January 23, 2016, 11:00:04 pm »
Hi,
The news is the war is over. So what's your ideas?
They better fix their shit slow PK3, I just spent whole day debugging and having to use Visual Studio to debug my C code what a bloody fail, I will never use a PIC again, I was attracted to their simplicity.. honey pot.

Slightly comfused? Using Visual Studio to debug with PK3? No wonder it was slow...... either you made a typo or are talking a steaming load of bollocks ;-)
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #18 on: January 23, 2016, 11:05:18 pm »
Quote
The today's hobbyists may be the tomorrow's professionals.

Possible but not probable.
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Offline andre_teprom

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #19 on: January 23, 2016, 11:40:01 pm »
Possible but not probable

I guess the primary message has been aready caught, but to paraphrase:
  • "Those who starts playing satisfied with certain MCU/IDE, tends to keep with the same manufacturer"

 :-+
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Offline dannyf

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #20 on: January 23, 2016, 11:51:22 pm »
Quote
"Those who starts playing satisfied with certain MCU/IDE, tends to keep with the same manufacturer"

Over the short term, it is probably true.

Over the long term, it is unlikely to be true: if you just look around there, there are always people who look for new things to learn, to try out, ... If the said manufacturer cannot remain competitive in its offerings, he will be left behind. Microchip, in my view, belongs to that category.
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Offline richardman

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #21 on: January 24, 2016, 01:41:56 am »
Microchip and state-of-the-art really don't go together! One cheap crap company bought another cheap crap company in an attempt to consolidate their (obviously) shrinking cheap crap market share. If there ever was a war between Microchip and Atmel then it is safe to say they killed each other. A few years ago I got lots of angry comments when I told people PIC is crap and they should look at ARM. Those days are long gone!

Don't hold back your opinions, tell us what you really think  ;D
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Offline chris_leyson

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #22 on: January 24, 2016, 02:04:24 am »
Back in the 90's Microchip published an application note on how to multiply two 8-bit numbers for 16CXX processors, so I programmed it in, and guess what, it got 0xff x 0xff wrong, they left a few instructions out. GI PIC what a load of crap, there were better processors back then 6802, 6502, Z80, I8051, I8048, TMS7000 !! GI PIC16 what a pile of shit and Microchip still selling this stuff.

It's a shame that a bunch of stupid people who can't design hardware and can't write software buy Atmel.
 

Offline AlxDroidDev

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #23 on: January 24, 2016, 02:12:43 am »
The today's hobbyists may be the tomorrow's professionals.

I strongly disagree. That may be valid for students, but not for other professionals that have taken electronics as a hobby. Am i such a case: I won't leave my regular trade (IT) to work with EE.  Besides, EE professionals, will delve into what the market demands, and today the market is demanding ARM.
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Online EEVblog

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Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #24 on: January 24, 2016, 02:34:33 am »
PIC is going to have an ARM core, I am not enthusiastic, but I think it's good  :-+

That seems to be one of the big obvious things that will come as a result.
Expect to see Atmel ARM chips with PIC peripherals
 


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