David Brown wrote:> Then there are the other benefits of having zero cost tools. Typically > you can download them and start working immediately - there are no > purchase orders to deal with, no waiting for dongles in the post, no > contracts to sign. You can install them on multiple computers or at > home offices without worrying about licenses. You never have to make > decisions like "it would be useful to have this running on the laptop as > well - but is it worth x thousand dollars?". > > I don't mean to say that all tools should be free - just that > microcontroller manufacturers would do well to make good free tools > easily available, even within professional markets. They (or third > parties) can profit from charging for /better/ tools - but only > providing bad tools for free is, IMHO, a silly strategy.Well said! The same goes for operating systems. Remember OS/2? If I had been IBM management, I would have paid Borland to port Delphi to it. There would then have been a flurry of reasonably good GUI software for OS/2. As it was, hardly any application software was ever developed for OS/2, and it died out as soon as its half-brother Windows 95 came along.
Hi-Tech Software bought by Microchip - no more other compilers
Started by ●July 6, 2009
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
Nico Coesel wrote:>> customers. Even if they charge nothing for the software, the time it >> takes for an engineer to get up to speed on the platform will equate to a >> few grand in salary. > > Are you grazy? It takes me a day to get into a new platform and start > working with it. Period.Yes... If it took $5k worth of time to get into a new platform, I would never have gotten into any platforms at all!
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Jul 9, 11:20=A0pm, krw <k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:> >> Classic attitude of a company just about to go bust. > > >Eh... You do know that in the very recent past it looked as if > >Microchip was going to buy Atmel, right? > > And this is relevent how?uChip was/is financially much better off than its technically superior competition.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Jul 9, 9:58=A0pm, "David L. Jones" <altz...@gmail.com> wrote:> Microchips own branded compiled is based on GCC and is free for most seri=es,> e.g 18, 24, 32It is free for the minority of series - 10/12/14/16 are [right now] not free. I suspect that they'll start offering a free suboptimal Hitech now though.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Thu, 9 Jul 2009 18:03:46 -0700, Mark Borgerson <mborgerson@comcast.net> wrote:>In article <4a56773b.3302684031@news.planet.nl>, nico@puntnl.niks >says... >> Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> wrote: >> >> > >> > >> >Robert Roland wrote: >> > >> >> >Even if they charge nothing for the software, the time it >> >> >takes for an engineer to get up to speed on the platform will equate to a >> >> >few grand in salary. >> >> >> >> Exactly. By giving away good tools, they will attract young hobbyists >> >> and students who don't have a lot of money. Years later, some of these >> >> people will inevitably end up in jobs in large companies. >> >> >> >> Imagine a situation where the new employee tells his boss: "I can do >> >> it. If we use an Atmel chip, I'll have it done by Friday, but if we >> >> use a Microchip chip, I'll need a few weeks to learn.". >> > >> >It is an obvious conclusion that is not supported by our marketing studies. >> > >> >Microchip's customer support has been a effective part of their business >> >promotion. >> > >> >Tool cost is small part (~2 man days cost) of overall project cost. >> >Accompanying tools support (about 40% of our support calls are >> >application more than tool related) makes tools very low cost overall. >> >> The problem with commercial tools is that each MCU has a different >> crappy IDE and a different toolchain. That is why the combination >> Eclipse, GCC en GDB is so powerful. You learn the tools once and can >> apply that knowledge to any target. Besides, Eclipse beats most IDEs >> hands down. >> >> >IAR has a decent commercial tool chain where many processors use the >same IDE. I've only used it for the ARM, but the IDE and debugging >facilities seem OK to me. YMMV.And they do code-limited free versions (at least for AVR and ARM) that are entirely useable for smaller chips.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:12:03 +0100, nospam <nospam@please.invalid> wrote:>who where <noone@home.net> wrote: > >>At the moment users are migrating away from Microchip in numbers, >>contributed to by the tools situation. > >If a $1000 tool cost is enough to swing a user between one or another >processor supplier that user isn't buying enough processors for either >supplier to care.Assuming the user is smart enough to understand that, and all the issues surrounding choice of vendor. I have frequently encountered customers who have gone with a particular chip on the basis of going to a seminar or being given a free eval board.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:54:19 -0700 (PDT), larwe <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote:>On Jul 9, 9:58�pm, "David L. Jones" <altz...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Microchips own branded compiled is based on GCC and is free for most series, >> e.g 18, 24, 32 > >It is free for the minority of series - 10/12/14/16 are [right now] >not free. I suspect that they'll start offering a free suboptimal >Hitech now though.They do. Problem is it is WAY below suboptimal.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Jul 10, 5:41=A0am, Mike Harrison <m...@whitewing.co.uk> wrote:> >It is free for the minority of series - 10/12/14/16 are [right now] > >not free. I suspect that they'll start offering a free suboptimal > >Hitech now though. > > They do. Problem is it is WAY below suboptimal.Yeah, right after I wrote the above I looked at the readme for the version of Hitech that MPLAB 8.33 dropped on my hard drive, and saw this. Ironically, I have much less trouble spending $500 or $1000 on a tool for myself than I do when working in my day job. At home I decide: will this tool pay for itself over one or two projects? if the answer is yes, I pull out the checkbook. At work, it's much more complicated and painful. I rarely do projects in pure asm any more. Occasionally I put in a little hand-optimized asm, but the vast majority of the code I write these days is in C. It's just so much faster to bring up and easier to maintain. So a good working C compiler is a must for me. No C compiler, and I don't use that micro.
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:29:07 -0400, MC <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc> wrote:>nospam wrote: >> who where <noone@home.net> wrote: >> >>> At the moment users are migrating away from Microchip in numbers, >>> contributed to by the tools situation. >> >> If a $1000 tool cost is enough to swing a user between one or another >> processor supplier that user isn't buying enough processors for either >> supplier to care. > >But small jobs lead to big jobs. Hobbies lead to small jobs. If you >really want to sell chips, win the hearts and minds of the hobbyists and >students.And also the hearts and minds of professionals who, if they have fun with what they're doing (and if not, perhaps should change careers), may want to "play" with a new chip or architecture. If the entry barrier to get set up is too high for an out of pocket expense, that chip may be bypassed and won't be designed-in. -- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Reply by ●July 10, 20092009-07-10
On 9 July, 18:39, "petrus bitbyter" <pieterkraltlaatdit...@enditookhccnet.nl> wrote:> "Leon" <leon...@btinternet.com> schreef in berichtnews:eabcb5ad-c626-48fc-93c9-027d094664dd@h11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com... > On 9 July, 02:57, who where <no...@home.net> wrote: > > > On Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:07:50 +0100, Nobody <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote: > > >On Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:32:25 +1000, The Real Andy wrote: > > > >>>> Is somebody buying the rights to these products? > > > >>>Unlikely, as they would probably include common code that is part of > > >>>the PIC > > >>>compiler which Microchip want to keep for themselves. > > > >>>Dave. > > > >> Its interesting this. Is microchip going to release the compiler free > > >> of charge? Atmel uses gcc, so it must be getting some good market > > >> share on that aspect alone. I recently did some work on the AP7000 > > >> running linux, and whilst I hate linux its clear that Atmel has done a > > >> lot of work to make it all free. Gcc is pretty good, can microchip > > >> beat it? > > > >Microchip uses gcc for their higher-end products, but modifying gcc for > > >an 8-bit target isn't realistic. > > > >I'm not expecting them to give away the Hi-Tech product for free. > > > (snip) > > > Why not? That surely is the optimum business model. Let's face it, their > > core > > business is selling silicon. If giving away the tools (which cost them > > incrementally nothing per copy) gains/retains buyers and user base, they > > are in > > front. At the moment users are migrating away from Microchip in numbers, > > contributed to by the tools situation. > > | > | Evidence? > | > | Leon > | > > Only a little bit: Myself. I've done some small PIC projects lately using > PICs that can (best) be programmed in assembler. Microchips tools for this > are good. Good enough for me that is. The last larger project that required > a C-compiler I used HI-tech. But the next larger project I'll go Atmel. I > know, nobody will care or even notice. But what if some thousends of others > will do the same? > > petrus bitbyterThat's not particularly significant! Microchip has a far larger market share than Atmel, and makes a profit, so they must be doing something right. Leon
