Atmel Bought by Microchip

On 31/07/16 02:11, Paul Rubin wrote:
> krw@attt.bizz writes:
>>> There are plenty of ARMs available for under $2.
>> (Well) Under $1.
> 
> Can you suggest any specific part numbers?  Thanks.
> 

There are Kinetis (Freescale, now NXP) M0+ devices for $0.50 or so.

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
> There are Kinetis (Freescale, now NXP) M0+ devices for $0.50 or so.

Yes this is true.  What I don't know is of any specific ones with
capabilities similar to the more popular AVR's (on-chip eeprom is one
such feature that seems hard to find).  It's also the case (I suppose
this would count as "inertia") that at least at the moment, there's lots
of little development boards with interesting functions, that use the
AVR and don't seem to have ARM counterparts.

luni, 1 august 2016, 21:53:05 UTC+3, Paul Rubin a scris:
> David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
> > There are Kinetis (Freescale, now NXP) M0+ devices for $0.50 or so.
> 
> Yes this is true.  What I don't know is of any specific ones with
> capabilities similar to the more popular AVR's (on-chip eeprom is one
> such feature that seems hard to find).  It's also the case (I suppose
> this would count as "inertia") that at least at the moment, there's lots
> of little development boards with interesting functions, that use the
> AVR and don't seem to have ARM counterparts.

Kinetis KE devices are 5V and have 256 bytes eeprom. The eeprom can be
enough for many applications, but it is indeed smaller than the AVR's.
They are also rated at 6kV ESD in the datasheet. This is quite high,
AVR's are somewhere around 4kV, STM32 and Silabs devices are regular
2kV. I re-designed a board which had an atmega8, with a STM32 M0 device
(a STM32F030 variant). That board just didn't work in that environment
(very noisy industrial). I was forced to revert to the poor AVR....

raimond.dragomir@gmail.com writes:
> Kinetis KE devices are 5V and have 256 bytes eeprom. The eeprom can be
> enough for many applications, but it is indeed smaller than the AVR's.

No prob about it being smaller.  For most uses I've thought of, a few
dozen bytes is plenty, but 0 bytes limits some applications.

> They are also rated at 6kV ESD in the datasheet. This is quite
> high,...

Hmm, I hadn't even thought of that issue.  Another thing someone
mentioned about avr's is that the gpio pins can source (or maybe just
sink) quite a lot of current, like 40mA.  That has to be good for
something.

On the other hand, the idle power consumption of the common avr's is
quite a lot higher than I expected, if I'm reading this right:

  https://github.com/manitou48/DUEZoo/blob/master/power.txt

marți, 2 august 2016, 08:28:47 UTC+3, Paul Rubin a scris:
> raimond.dragomir@gmail.com writes:
> > Kinetis KE devices are 5V and have 256 bytes eeprom. The eeprom can be
> > enough for many applications, but it is indeed smaller than the AVR's.
> 
> No prob about it being smaller.  For most uses I've thought of, a few
> dozen bytes is plenty, but 0 bytes limits some applications.

Yes indeed. Although, depending on the internal flash technology and
provided interface to the user, one can emulate a eeprom. I'm doing
this on STM32F030 devices which don't have eeprom.

> 
> > They are also rated at 6kV ESD in the datasheet. This is quite
> > high,...
> 
> Hmm, I hadn't even thought of that issue.  

Neither did I, until I faced it. I had some boards with XMEGA devices
which I ported to cheaper F030. No problem, but the industrial environment
was quite "normal". I thought I can equalize the family by porting some
other two designs which had ATMEGA8 cpu to the same F030... No luck
this time. The F030 just stops working. The internal watchdog gets it back 
to work, and it's quite fast at 2ms. But the hiccups are noticeable.

In article <MPG.3200a8f750a1f026989805@172.16.0.1>,
Paul  <paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <nn56ct$jti$1@reader2.panix.com>, invalid@invalid.invalid
>says...
>>
>> On 2016-07-25, pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Il 23/07/2016 05:01, krw@attt.bizz ha scritto:
>>
>> >> The AVR architecture isn't all that great
>> >
>> > I worked with PIC and AVR and IMHO AVR is much better.
>>
>> Talk about damning with faint praise...
>
>
>Me thinks, you resemble this to the which is better Cyanide or
>Arsenic...

Cyanide is much better.

The Nazi leaders and their children died within minutes with cyanide.
For a description of the suffering involved in arsenic see Madame
Bovary, Flaubert.

Also recovering from small quantities of cyanide is total
or unnecessary, as it is present in quite some food.
Small doses of arsenic accumulate and permanently affect
your health.

So what is your point?

>Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
Groetjes Albert
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 17:58:59 +0100 (CET),
albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) wrote:

>Also recovering from small quantities of cyanide is total
>or unnecessary, as it is present in quite some food.
>Small doses of arsenic accumulate and permanently affect
>your health.

Cyanides come in both organic and inorganic forms.  The inorganic
forms are deadly.  In the small quantities typically  found in foods,
the body can eliminate the organic forms.  

George