RE: [AVR-Chat] Shortage of parts
2010-10-06 by Tim Mitchell
We are having similar problems in UK. Atmel Dataflash parts are unavailable until further notice, nobody will give a delivery time. Many AVR processors 6 months in any quantity. We have used Microchip PIC on a recent project (they are not bad processors these days, though the IDE/C compiler is a little quirky to say the least). I was speaking to an Atmel rep yesterday and he said that they have plenty of silicon, but Atmel do not own any packaging facilities (ie to put the plastic and the pins on) and there is a lot of demand for this. But they are opening their own plant at the end of this year which he said should improve things by the middle of next year. However because of this I am now looking for alternatives to Atmel when designing new products. The NXP Cortex-M3 parts (LPC17xx) are extremely nice - 32 bit micro for cheaper than AVR 8-bit in many situations. The only disadvantage is they don't have internal EEPROM. And you can buy them. You do need to buy a new development system, we have got Crossworks from Rowley which makes AVR Studio and Microchip MPLab look like kids toys. -- Tim Mitchell