atmel understands something mcp missed: planting seeds.
its about the learner and home diy'er.
I see no new *****learner and home diy***** projects that are pic based compared to the numerous ones that are arduino based.
this is a very smart business approach.
atmel is totally winning over the new generation of kids
it seems that every controller based board I get from ebay/china uses the VERY ancient 8051 series chips!
I can't understand the 8051 love over there,
the western DIY market, though, shows no signs of slowing on 8bit cpus.
I avoided the mega-arduino chips because they are not diy solder friendly and I want my users to be able to solder and repair their own boards.
the HELL with trying to sell software; its not their market and they are stupid to think this has to be a profit-center.
Quoteatmel is totally winning over the new generation of kids
My initial comment wasn't really about Microchip vs. Atmel - both, in my view, have a bleak future.
This year is the 3rd year over the last 5 years that I have visited China for mcu-related seminars. PICs are practically not followed there; AVRs had some followings and many people there are switching to ST (STM8 or STM32). You would say the biggest and most enthusiastic participation at those 32-bit ARM seminars (Freescale and Renesas have their own following, also very strong). And the enthusiasm got bigger each time as time went by.
If I were Atmel, particularly Microchip, I would be very scared.
The glory days of 8-bit mcus are probably behind us.
Quoteit seems that every controller based board I get from ebay/china uses the VERY ancient 8051 series chips!
Does that include the "fake" Arduino boards you got from China?QuoteI can't understand the 8051 love over there,
Maybe it has something to do with their functionality? Value? Availability? ...? Try to find a PIC or AVR with 24-bit onboard ADC; or onboard CPLD? ...QuoteI avoided the mega-arduino chips because they are not diy solder friendly and I want my users to be able to solder and repair their own boards.
That's a valid concern if you don't have access to affordable PCB services.
I have not heard of anyone seriously using 8051's on any new projects in well over 15 yrs.
Quotego to hack-a-day
I said this earlier so let me be blunt: if you want to know how a product does in its market, go look at how it does in its market, not how it does in *****some segments***** of its market.
Hope it helps.
The glory days of 8-bit mcus are probably behind us.
QuoteI have not heard of anyone seriously using 8051's on any new projects in well over 15 yrs.
Time to broaden your horizon again,
I'm pretty active in the diy world...
they simply had a suitable product on the market for which open/free 3rdparty tools were available.
If Microchip had reasonable tooling, they would have had that market segment too.
is it true that they do insert no-ops to cripple the free versions? is that only on some architectures?
it would be great if that was a false rumor. I just can't fathom using a tool that knowingly slows down your generated code.
This is/was true for the XC8 (which is actually rebranded HI-TECH C).
I am using the old HI-TECH C 9.80 lite
I would argue that in the 8-bit world, Atmel's products are light year ahead of Microchip's: speed, hardware multiplier, vectored interrupts, adc, etc. Basically the latecomer's advantage.
its not always the best chip for the task, but the fact that the devel tools work on all 3 platforms and are fully free (and pretty mature, too) seals to deal for me.
I can buy preprogrammed chips from MicrochipDirect for a few pennies more. AFAIK no other MCU manufacturer does this, at least for small (<1000) qtys, or as easily. Even if all that gets preprogrammed is a bootloader, this can save a lot of time and hassle in production.