Which microcontroller is better PIC or AVR?

[JohnJ]

pic vs avr power consumption

My microcontroller can beat up your microcontroller!

It's scary how defensive people get about "their" micro.
There are a lot of considerations to picking a micro. If you are building a hobby project..go with what ever you know. If you want to expand your knowledge base, pick one you don't know!

For real engineering projects, a lot of things come into the choice; speed, NOISE, frequency of oscillator (mixing with any analog signals), power consumption, compatable hardware resources, cost, packaging, output drive, input abuse tolerance, and all the tradeoffs of each parameter. You really have to look at each of these in your application before you can choose. :|

I've used all three (4 incl. the TI). Each has their advantages.

 

[mutevaggil]

16f690 pwm

Why not use MSP430 instead? It is the world lowest power microcontroller, it has good performance, it is modern and above all it has the cheapest development tools.

what kind of assembly lang. is used in MSP430? i mean, instruciton set is like PIC,8051 or AVR? or anyrhing else?

and is it esay to learn?

 

[JohnJ]

comparison atmel avr and pic18

I wasn't going to weigh in but....
Most of the time I choose PIC's. I've used their great little SOT23-6 for intellegent logic replacement. Most of the time its the PIC18F252 or 452 because it has the PPL clock, which radiates 1/4 of it's actual freq. from the crystal. It also has the 8x8 multiplier built in.
The other reason I use the PICs is that the assembler is the easiest to learn, because it has the fewest instruction. RISC - Reduced Instruction Set Computer. That's a branch of the Harvard Archetecture which uses seperate Instruction memory buss from the Data buss and therefore fetches and executes at the same time.
I have found for controller type uses, the assembler is very easy to use, and allows you to write in "C" type form.

 

[manojanand]

pic24 or avr

i will certainly go for pic.

 

[waseem]

Re: PIC or AVR

Hi!
This debate is never going to end, but i think that atleast you should not use the

word dumb for 8051.

I started with PIC and i am still using it.

I have also used the AVR series and i am still using it for my projects.

I have started working on LPC2000 series and can easily say that it is one of the

most powerfull micorcontrollers that i have worked with.

so my advice to you is to start with PIC's because they are easier to learn and

later on learn the other ones as well because as a designer you have to choose a

particular microcontroller for a certain application on the basis of the design

requirements.

Best of luck.

Regards.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Re: PIC or AVR

Your choice of microcontrollers should be based on the application you have in mind.
Also availability is key, can you buy locally?
You'll also need a programmer of some form, and an affordable ICE or ICD makes programming and debugging much much eaiser.

I use PICs, I program in assembler and use them for all sorts of projects. They have high current output 20ma and can be simple like the 12F508 to complex dsPIC.

They may not be the fastest microcontrollers or have the most memory*. They are cheap, the tools are cheap and easy to grasp. (I describe and sell an ICD2 compatible on my site (https://www.blueroomelectronics.com/) very handy to have both a programmer AND debugger)

*Do you need 100MHz & 128K Flash for ANY beginner project? The commodore 64 had only 64K RAM and ran at about 0.5MHz and played video games!

 

[chieeeeef]

Re: PIC or AVR

I started using PIC microcontrollers as it was taught to us during my college years. It's much easier to learn using PIC rather than Atmel but then again I've seen some of my professors use Atmel which I believe has more capabilities as compared to the PIC microcontrollers, thus making it more complicated to use and learn as well. But it all boils down to whatever application that you intend to do.

 

[ezshereef]

Re: PIC or AVR

I Think you live in egypt, if so then using 8051 core will not help you much as the 8051 based MCUs found in egypt are mostly 89c51 and 89c52 which have very few peripherals. On the other hand you can find PIC or AVR core MCUs with lots of peripherals. I don't know what are the PIC MCUs available but for the AVR you will find ATmega8, ATmega16, ATmega8535 and AT90s2313. you can check for their datasheets and find which will suite you best. for a local electronics vendor check

**broken link removed**

Thank you
shereef

 

[geok]

Re: PIC or AVR

Well, lets see the AVR/PIC/8051/ARM7/TI benchmarks of a third party microcontroller manufacturer:
**broken link removed**, **broken link removed**
You can see that the 8-bit AVR is almost as powerfull as the the others' 16-bitters!

My personal choice is the 8-bit AVR, ecpecially the newer ATmega-P picoPower Technology members. If you need more horsepower you can directly go with the 32-bit ARM7/ARM9.

 

[yasser_shoukry]

PIC or AVR

What about freescale MCUs, I love 68HC12 very much. It is a very very powerful MCU.

But the main disadvantage of freescale MCUs is price for both the chip and compilers

 

[ahmedsalah00]

PIC or AVR

Mohamed, Salamu Alaikum
I dont know why you described 8051 as dummy , it is a very powerful microcontroller. I have seen many powerful projects accomplished with this 8-bit microcontroller. For my self I could build Via 8051 the following:
1- AC motor controller
2- data acquisistion - computer interfacing controller
3- GPS automotive navigation system

I suggest that you master your 8051 course first and implement a real-life project. Then you you will be able to judge if you need to learn a more powerful microcontroller or not.

My sugestion for you is learning AVR , you can even implement HORRIBLE projects on Atmega8535 !

Regards

 

[kk2mkk]

Re: PIC or AVR

AVR animated tutorials from

http://www.microschematic.com/

 

[Eugen_E]

Re: PIC or AVR

I used both AVR and PIC, and I recomend AVR.
AVR runs at the crystal frequency, not fCLK/4, and it has more instructions. More instructions along with single clock execution provides a higher computation power.
Also the assembly language is very simple an easy to use, powerfull, and you can develop your first application imediately.
You can also write programs in C, and combine C and assembly, if you use the Code Vision compiler from www.hpinfotech.ro

A free and good C compiler is gcc, with Winavr, available on www.sourceforge.net

The Atmel datasheets are very clear and constantly updated.

 

[LBdgWgt]

Re: PIC or AVR

Hi,

i think it doesnt make anysense to have long discussion about which microcontroller is better in general. it is like asking "which football team is the best?" (you can see my avatar ) and people will say what their own opinion.
Personally i used to work a lot with AVR, but it doesnt make me that i will not try to use PIC in the future.

there are some exceptions altough, like critical power consumption, etc. maybe then you should compare it. but for general usage like hobby,learning, etc. , just use what is available for you. the uC manufacturer are competing very well i think. so most probably for the same level of microcontrollers, you will get the same features from any vendor.

regards,

 

[MathGeek]

Re: PIC or AVR

Hey, I am having a similar dilemma here.

I do have some questions though.

The free C18 compiler for PIC expires in 60 days after installation ,and it does not perform as a full version. How much performance difference does this make in reality?

I believe AVRSTUDIO4 comes with AVR-GCC complier *integrated* so there is no need to download WINAVR. Is this correct?

I am an somewhat (but not much) experienced user for PIC (done PWM, USART, ADC, etc). I have money invested in PIC, obviously equipments and stocked PICs.
But I am also thinking of actually learning AVR because AVR has fully optimized C compiler. I just would like to know how the free C18 compare to AVR-GCC. And the fact that AVR has better interrupt vectors and instruction clock attract me.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[vijayragavalu]

Re: PIC or AVR

as you know 8051 you can easily learn AVR and if you know AVR very well you can easily learn the PIC MCU also.learn avr first and then PIC.then chose MCU for your application.i think all it takes not more than 20 days. good luck.

 

[Nandulal]

PIC or AVR

Ya,
I agree with this "8-bit AVR is almost as powerfull as the the others' 16-bitters".
The instruction set is quit powerful than any other uC.
Programming on PIC is tedeous as we have to manage our logic in very few instructions.

 

[mutevaggil]

Re: PIC or AVR

AVR animated tutorials from

h**p://www.microschematic.com/

a nice sharing. Thanks a lot.

And all people who wrote their opinion about comparing two microcontrollers.

 

[7rots51]

Re: PIC or AVR

Use AVR atmega series ,they are perfect choice in any view that you see.

I recomment you look at ARM7 32 bit micros Like as philips LPC2364,LPC2378 for better and higher needs.

 

[waseem]

Re: PIC or AVR

Hi Folks!
Well this debate is never going to end and i think that we all are chasing a wild goose.

The choice of processor for a particular application depends upon ur requirement.

I started with PIC's and have always enjoyed working with them, they are great
for all sorts of applications.

Lateron i switched to AVR because i needed more MIPS for a project. AVR's are also very nice chips.

But once again i have selected PIC's for my latest project because i needed a microcontroller with a CAN interface and Microchip has got a bundle of such chips in different code and pin sizes as compared to Atmel.

I also use Phillips LPC series for some of my projects and believe me no one can compete them as far as onchip peripherals are concerned.

So the moral of the debate should be

"Choose a microcontroller which is the best for that particular project"

Regards.