Author Topic: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL  (Read 40799 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline EEVblog

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 37661
  • Country: au
    • EEVblog
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #25 on: January 24, 2016, 02:36:33 am »
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.

Err, that was 28 years ago. A few improvements have been made since then.
 

Offline EEVblog

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 37661
  • Country: au
    • EEVblog
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #26 on: January 24, 2016, 02:40:12 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!

And many people who moved to ARM have been burned by parts becoming either obsolete very quickly in the industry scheme of things, or the company being bought and the processor line they used dropped.
Microchip on the other hand are still selling micros from 20+ years ago.
ARM ain't the universal panacea many make it out to be.
 
The following users thanked this post: Lucky-Luka

Offline kony

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 242
  • Country: cz
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #27 on: January 24, 2016, 02:43:07 am »
... And many people who moved to ARM have been burned by parts becoming either obsolete very quickly in the industry scheme of things, or the company being bought and the processor line they used dropped.
Microchip on the other hand are still selling micros from 20+ years ago.
ARM ain't the universal panacea many make it out to be.

Shit! And I was just considering using freescale ARM parts for new design. How big is the chance NXP will kill those chip lines in closest 5 years?
 

Offline c4757p

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7799
  • Country: us
  • adieu
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #28 on: January 24, 2016, 02:58:13 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.

Okay, I dislike PICs as much as the next Atmel fanboy, but come on, it's a pile of shit because of one bug in an app note? Care to say who does meet your high standards? Some Atmel parts have errata lists a mile long, and they've certainly got some dodgy app notes...
No longer active here - try the IRC channel if you just can't be without me :)
 

Offline andre_teprom

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 71
  • Country: br
    • Aluis-Rcastro
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #29 on: January 24, 2016, 03:22:44 am »
Expect to see Atmel ARM chips with PIC peripherals

Just to bring an worthless information, but which incidentally underlines your wishes:
The term PIC is an acronym of "Peripheral Interface Controller"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIC_microcontroller
"Part of the world that you live in, You are the part that you're giving" ( Renaissance )
 

Online chris_leyson

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1541
  • Country: wales
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #30 on: January 24, 2016, 03:24:41 am »
richardman what am I really thinking ? Microchip killing off the serial processing market with a pile of shit hardware and software that doesn't work real time. What is that interrupt latency that isn't documented, I shouldn't have to measure it with a scope but I have to, because to measure is to know. Serial processing, thats old school, and Microchip screwing things up with abstracted software.

I don't think Microchip got a clue about processing, they can't design hardware peripherals that work let alone software.
 

Online chris_leyson

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1541
  • Country: wales
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #31 on: January 24, 2016, 03:29:20 am »
PIC peripherals, you got to be joking, they don't work, they can't get core Silicon right let alone peripherals.
 

Offline DerekG

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 882
  • Country: nf
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #32 on: January 24, 2016, 04:14:12 am »
This *might* have an impact on our choices of suppliers. PIC and AVRs have historically been the 2 competing sides for hobbyists, and now both will belong to the same manufacturer, who will be able to set prices as it seems fit.

Yes, I see this as the biggest worry. Less competition generally means higher prices.

This will affect high volume manufacturers in many more ways than just the hobbyist market.

Microchip has certainly been on a buying spree in recent years:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/dealbook/microchip-technology-to-buy-atmel-for-nearly-3-6-billion.html?_r=0
I also sat between Elvis & Bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline Bruce Abbott

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 627
  • Country: nz
    • Bruce Abbott's R/C Models and Electronics
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #33 on: January 24, 2016, 05:36:31 am »
I don't think Microchip got a clue about processing, they can't design hardware peripherals that work let alone software...

PIC peripherals, you got to be joking, they don't work, they can't get core Silicon right let alone peripherals.
Which is why nobody buys Microchip MCUs and now Atmel is buying them out. Oh wait...

Microchip Reclaims Top 8-bit Microcontroller Revenue Ranking
2014 Market Share Grows in 8, 16 and 32-bit MCUs; Breaks Into Top 10 for 32-bit

Quote
CHANDLER, Ariz., April 27, 2015
“We are pleased to report that Microchip has regained the #1 position for 8-bit microcontrollers,” said Steve Sanghi, Microchip’s president and CEO. “Four years ago, it took the merger of three Japanese semiconductor giants—NEC, Hitachi and Mitsubishi in the form of Renesas—to knock us off the #1 spot for 8-bit MCUs. We said at the time that we would work relentlessly to gain market share and wrest back the #1 spot. Following their merger in 2010, Renesas’ 8-bit MCU business was 41% larger than ours. In every year since 2010, we closed the gap, and in 2014 we regained our leadership position, finishing 10.5% higher than Renesas.”
All those stupid customers buying PICs that don't work!

 
The following users thanked this post: Lucky-Luka

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #34 on: January 24, 2016, 11:45:15 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!
And many people who moved to ARM have been burned by parts becoming either obsolete very quickly in the industry scheme of things, or the company being bought and the processor line they used dropped.
Microchip on the other hand are still selling micros from 20+ years ago.
ARM ain't the universal panacea many make it out to be.
You can't attribute some manufacturers having short term support to ARM; I'd expected better reasoning! When using a device and need long term availability you should always investigate whether it is a small hit&run company or they have a good track record. NXP for example still has their first ARM devices (LPC2104/5/6) active which have been introduced over a decade ago. Not to mention their original 8051 portfolio!

@AcHmed99: Look at NXP for short errata sheets!
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 11:54:05 am by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline matkar

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 153
  • Country: si
  • Sixty percent of the time it works EVERY time.
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #35 on: January 24, 2016, 12:19:40 pm »
Someone mentioned Atmel is staying afloat because of the Arduino...
AVR chip sales due to Arduino are a drop in the sea. Profits are made by selling millions to industry and not one piece to a weekend engineer.
And the industry doesn't care if the chip has ARM or whatever architecture. They care about the price. They will choose whatever chip is capable of doing the job for the lowest cost possible. That is why the 8 bit micros are still present on the market. There are many products where 8 bit uC is good enough and much less products where a more powerful uC is needed.
 

Offline diyaudio

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • !
  • Posts: 683
  • Country: za
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #36 on: January 24, 2016, 12:24:07 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!
And many people who moved to ARM have been burned by parts becoming either obsolete very quickly in the industry scheme of things, or the company being bought and the processor line they used dropped.
Microchip on the other hand are still selling micros from 20+ years ago.
ARM ain't the universal panacea many make it out to be.
You can't attribute some manufacturers having short term support to ARM; I'd expected better reasoning! When using a device and need long term availability you should always investigate whether it is a small hit&run company or they have a good track record. NXP for example still has their first ARM devices (LPC2104/5/6) active which have been introduced over a decade ago. Not to mention their original 8051 portfolio!

@AcHmed99: Look at NXP for short errata sheets!

you are a nxp guy here, question do they sample chips outside Europe?
 

Offline hans

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1626
  • Country: nl
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #37 on: January 24, 2016, 12:24:55 pm »
richardman what am I really thinking ? Microchip killing off the serial processing market with a pile of shit hardware and software that doesn't work real time. What is that interrupt latency that isn't documented, I shouldn't have to measure it with a scope but I have to, because to measure is to know. Serial processing, thats old school, and Microchip screwing things up with abstracted software.

I don't think Microchip got a clue about processing, they can't design hardware peripherals that work let alone software.

Of course you have to measure this. How else are you going to know? Or could you tell me exactly what software timing requirements you have on a STM32F427 Cortex m4 chip with 8 USARTs firing off RXNE, TXE & IDLE interrupts, timer interrupts, DMA transfer complete requests, ethernet/USB ticks while some DMA request is stalling the complete peripheral bus because the APB1 DMA peripheral is trying to access the APB2 bus?

No - what's even more great is that the USART implementation on (I believe any) STM32 doesn't have a FIFO. That's great when it's serving 8 USARTs @ 115200 Baud. The only answer you will find is "DMA is it all".. but no not really. What about variable packet sizes, response latency when you use DMA timeouts, or DMA stream/request collisions with other peripherals? In order to find this all out, you are forced to look up the 1731 page user manual and hope you don't miss anything. Else you're basically screwed.

And don't get me started on the STM timers: could they have made that any more complex? And it still doesn't do what I wanted it to do - like generate DMA requests with ETR pin at that frequency - not at half of it.

Although the peripherals of PIC are usually very simple and scarce of configuration bits - I do like some of the flexibility. E.g. there is no messing about with DMA request tables; just enter an IRQn and it's all good.

Can't say much good about the 8-bit PIC core. I stopped using them for anything requiring more than 1 C source file. If anything is gained from this acquisition; they should at least merge the AVR core with some of the PICs pluses.

I don't agree that Atmel/Microchip should watch carefully are the hobbyists. The "market share" of hobbyists is absolutely nothing - yet we find ourselves very important in the market. Although many students & young engineers will probably start using a particular microcontroller they have used in their quality time, for anything that's really work related it's all about the features, familiarity with other engineers and development time/cost.
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #38 on: January 24, 2016, 12:30:48 pm »
you are a nxp guy here, question do they sample chips outside Europe?
Probably but I always buy the microcontrollers from Farnell, Digikey or Mouser, etc.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline DerekG

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 882
  • Country: nf
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #39 on: January 24, 2016, 12:49:25 pm »
Someone mentioned Atmel is staying afloat because of the Arduino...
AVR chip sales due to Arduino are a drop in the sea. Profits are made by selling millions to industry and not one piece to a weekend engineer.

Correct.

Quote
And the industry doesn't care if the chip has ARM or whatever architecture. They care about the price.

Correct again.

Quote
They will choose whatever chip is capable of doing the job for the lowest cost possible.

Three out of three. You're right on the knocker.

Quote
That is why the 8 bit micros are still present on the market. There are many products where 8 bit uC is good enough and much less products where a more powerful uC is needed.

Four out of four.

I'm glad someone in this forum understands that to be successful against your competition, you need to meet at least one of the following three conditions:

1/ Make your widget for less $$ than you competitors;

2/ Make a better widget (that customers can still afford to buy) than your competitors;

3/ Preferably, be able to meet both 1/ & 2/ above.
I also sat between Elvis & Bigfoot on the UFO.
 

Offline BFX

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 376
  • Country: sk
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #40 on: January 24, 2016, 12:53:00 pm »
 
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
:-+ would be nice :)
 

Offline Karel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2214
  • Country: 00
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #41 on: January 24, 2016, 02:11:48 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.

I hope not, MPLAB X is ten times better then that bloated Atmel Studio. Even worse, Atmel Studio requires windows.
I'm not surprised Atmel has been taken over...
 

Offline Karel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2214
  • Country: 00
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #42 on: January 24, 2016, 02:14:13 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.

Blame yourself for buying something cheap. If you want speed, open your wallet and buy an ICD3.

 

Offline dannyf

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8221
  • Country: 00
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #43 on: January 24, 2016, 02:30:04 pm »
Quote
How big is the chance NXP will kill those chip lines in closest 5 years?

if anything, you should worry about NXP/Freescale killing the NXP parts.
================================
https://dannyelectronics.wordpress.com/
 

Offline dannyf

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8221
  • Country: 00
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #44 on: January 24, 2016, 02:32:20 pm »
Quote
I don't agree that Atmel/Microchip should watch carefully are the hobbyists.

Agreed. The hobbyist market is tiny for those guys. I think I once estimated that on a good day the Arduino means less than 1% of Atmel's mcu business.
================================
https://dannyelectronics.wordpress.com/
 

Online chris_leyson

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1541
  • Country: wales
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #45 on: January 24, 2016, 02:39:10 pm »
Thanks Hans, I will avoid STM32, and I thought PICs were bad. They're not that bad PIC18 and 24 are still useful. Might have a look at TI's MSP430 and they now come with nonvolatile FRAM, nice feature.
 

Offline Kleinstein

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 14067
  • Country: de
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #46 on: January 24, 2016, 08:20:17 pm »
The hobby market is still important - not so much for the sales, but for the students learining about that type of µC. In industrie it is not only about the price of the chips but also about the engeniers knowing the chips. There is a considerable price tag if they have to learn a new achitetecture and an new IDE.  This is why many offer free IDEs.

 

Offline Mechatrommer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11534
  • Country: my
  • reassessing directives...
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #47 on: January 24, 2016, 08:59:37 pm »
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.
Blame yourself for buying something cheap. If you want speed, open your wallet and buy an ICD3.
atmel avr mk2 has both cheap and speed, even the clone one like mine... no need to blame myself..
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26751
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #48 on: January 24, 2016, 09:12:16 pm »
The hobby market is still important - not so much for the sales, but for the students learining about that type of µC.
I doubt that has much influence. In most companies there will be seasoned engineers and the interns and the employees fresh from school will have very little say in which microcontroller to use in a project. The focus for many vendors is to somehow persuade the senior engineers to switch to a different architecture. Just for fun have some sales reps over and watch. They'll all start bragging how easy the IDE from vendor blablabla is and how quick you can get started. Those would be true if you forget all the software engineering angles to firmware development...
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline richardman

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 427
  • Country: us
Re: ATMEL Vs Microchip war is over.... Microchip will acquire ATMEL
« Reply #49 on: January 24, 2016, 09:37:35 pm »
I'm glad someone in this forum understands that to be successful against your competition, you need to meet at least one of the following three conditions:

1/ Make your widget for less $$ than you competitors;

2/ Make a better widget (that customers can still afford to buy) than your competitors;


One or both of the above AND

3/ Be there before your competitiors
// richard http://imagecraft.com/
JumpStart C++ for Cortex (compiler/IDE/debugger): the fastest easiest way to get productive on Cortex-M.
Smart.IO: phone App for embedded systems with no app or wireless coding
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf