AVR-Chat

On Sat, 2009-08-15 at 04:14 +0100, leon Heller wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "tim gilbert" <tim@jeminnovation.com>
> To: <AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 3:44 AM
> Subject: Re: [AVR-Chat] Re: PIC's s*ck!!
> 
> 
> > Basically, the only reason to use a PIC is because "we've always done it 
> > that way".  I've heard that the PIC was actually designed by another 
> > company in the late '70s; they thought it was dead; sold it to Microchip 
> > who launched a marketing blitz for it.  Back when our only other options 
> > were the M6800,  8080 etc, it was an attractive processor for small 
> > projects.  However, it's been left in the dust by Atmel and TI.
> 
> Microchip is number one in 8-bit MCUs because it gives customers what they 
> want, support is excellent , and they provide good, low-cost tools. They 
> also make a very nice range of 16-bit devices (the dsPICs and PIC24) with a 
> better architecture than the AVR, much more performance and a lower price. I 
> use both AVRs and PICs, but I find that I can usually find a PIC to do an 
> equivalent job to an AVR at a lower price.
> 
> Leon 

I'll have to agree with Leon here.  When I have looked at Atmel chips
thinking about replacements for the PIC chips we use, the only chips I
found that had all the features we needed were much larger and more
expensive than the PIC we were using.

One of my gripes with the Microchip stuff though is the lack of free or
inexpensive C compilers for the 16-and-higher-bit devices.  An even
bigger gripe is the lack of Linux support, which is one of the main
reasons I started using AVR.

Moses