
Microchip to Acquire Atmel for $3.56B - omnibrain
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/20/microchip-to-acquire-atmel-for-3-56-billion/
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jwatte
While Atmel MCUs are nice and robust (especially avr-gcc and avr-libc are
great advantages) they seen like quite high cost. Cheaper ARMs probably are
eating their lunch.

Meanwhile, I've never been friends with the microchip Dev tools. Clunky,
expensive, proprietary. Here's hoping we'll get AVR ergonomics and PIC
economics...

But it might be too late to matter. Cortex-M0 eats the low end, M4 the mid
end, and the phone SoCs the high end. (Even Intel may be threatened at some
point... Different business though)

~~~
buserror
Well there still is a case for the AVR -- you get zero pipelining effects, no
flash latency etc; it's like a tiny, slow, scalar CPLD for all intent and
purpose.

Cortex can't beat that, you can tight loop an AVR to cycle precision and get
pretty cool return for your running frequency; the Cortex are nowhere as
linear. [0]

Altho, I agree that the bigger parts are useless... xmegas and such have
absolutely no reason to exist IMO.

On the other hand the CM3 and especially M4's are awesome beast; and the parts
like the STM32's are just peerless in terms of features -- they are just
borderline scary.

On the other hand, I was worried a little while back that there was nothing
between these trusted 8 bits cores and the ARMs -- but nowadays there is;
Espressif esp8266 is pretty cool, but the next one in the pipeline is awesome
[1]; 2 (well 3 but) cores, and more peripherals than you can shake a stick at.
Thats the first SoC that for me can give the STM32 (and NXP equivalent) a good
run for their money (and win, in my opinion).

Dislaimer: [0] I know the AVR very well, I'm the author of simavr:
[http://github.com/buserror/simavr](http://github.com/buserror/simavr) \-- [1]
I'm also one of the beta tester for the ESP31/32 new chipset.

~~~
revelation
People care about time, not cycles, and chances are with whatever crystal is
running your AVR, you will still not be comfortable despite the lack of
post-1990 CPU features in ATmegas.

And finally, the idea of tight loops engineered to cycle precision is dying a
slow death in general. You just smother the hard timing requirements with
excess frequency and performance.

Curious thing about the ESP8266: it doesn't use ARM or any of the other
popular kids on the block but a Tensilica Xtensa architecture.

------
chillingeffect
Atmel was a sleepy, ran-with company until they had a hit with the tiny and
mega series. They were a fresh architecture, ample peripherals, great
documentation and open. Who could have anticipated the Arduino's success?
Their transition past 8-bit was lackluster due to poor peripherals, poor
documentation and unimpressive performance.

They were on the ropes when the cortex cores delivered the coup de grace. I'm
not sure they were worth even this much. So long, Atmel. It's been a slice.

~~~
Gibbon1
Would have been nice if instead of the xmega parts with the old AVR core +
brand new complex and somewhat buggier peripherals they'd instead swapped out
the AVR core with an ARM Cortex M0 core.

~~~
buserror
Not really. for all intent and purpose, the AVR peripherals are very limited.
Yes they are easy to use etc, but they are VERY limited -- no FIFO on any of
the serial interfaces for example...

There are much, much better IP to do these kind of things if you decide to
upgrade the core...

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vvanders
Noooo. Damn.

Really loved Ateml's IDE. Microchip always charged for their IDE/compiler and
I never felt like it was quite as nice to use.

~~~
phyllostachys
RIP Atmel Studios...

I can only imagine how this is going to affect choosing a microcontroller in
the future. When I was in school, PIC vs AVR was often debated. I also really
liked the selection of ARM Cortex-M parts that Atmel offered. I can only hope
that the good parts of Atmel remain into the future.

~~~
vvanders
Honestly I'll probably move to Cypress' PSoC. They're pretty nice if a tad
expensive and the IDE is quite solid. Their BT devkit is quite nice.

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strags
I used to have a favorable opinion of Microchip, until their patent case
against Scenix.

[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Court+Rules+for+Scenix+Semicon...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Court+Rules+for+Scenix+Semiconductor+in+Dispute+With+Microchip%3B...-a053963382)

Featuring such fabulous claims as:

\-- Having a number of I/O pins that is less than the instruction word size;
the SX Series 12-bit instruction word is clearly smaller than its number of
I/O pins.

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dmschulman
Atmel is so visible though, no wonder they're getting gobbled up. From a
hobbyist point of view, I see so many projects involving Atmel chips is almost
makes me think they have a monopoly on that, growing, segment of the market.
This probably has as much to do with cheaper cost as it does with (relative)
ease of use.

~~~
gherkin0
Isn't it more that Arduino boards dominate the hobbyist microcontroller space,
and they have historically used AVR? IIRC, most new Arduino models are now ARM
based.

~~~
nerfhammer
Newer ones coming out are ARM but they're not a direct replacement yet due to
being significantly more expensive

uno currently retails for $25, the arm-based zero is going for $50

~~~
andrey-g
Uno and Zero are not directly comparable.

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paulannesley
This might be a better source link:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/dealbook/microchi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/business/dealbook/microchip-
technology-to-buy-atmel-for-nearly-3-6-billion.html)

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yuhong
Investor presentation:
[http://www.microchip.com/pdf/Atmel_Acquisition_Investor_Pres...](http://www.microchip.com/pdf/Atmel_Acquisition_Investor_Presentation_FINAL.pdf)

~~~
casylum
Page 5 - Microchip plans to cut Atmel R&D from 20% to 15%.

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blin17
Anyone know why the Dialog from back in September deal fell through?

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smcl
Not sure if we're able to give specifics, but maybe if the overall offers
weren't too different in overall value Microchip offered more cash over stock?
The only previous story I read about this is here, which isn't too informative
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/15/microchip_atmel/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/15/microchip_atmel/)

