Atmel or PIC? - looking fot the best brand

[swanann2000]

Atmel or PIC?

I'm looking for the best brand, as a core, as global system...

Thanks in advance.

 

[Stark]

Although they are good cores and they are suitable for a big range of application if you need professional platform the best solution is hitachi microcontroller family,bye Stark.

 

[mrmookiebud]

Mmm, interesting. Not completely sure I'd agree but why do you say Hitachi is the best solution?

 

[swanann2000]

Thanks for reply, i think so; but we are looking for a low cost (1 dollar, 1.5 dollar), and low power consumption devices. Our choice was Atmel and PIC, what do you think?.

Thanks.

 

[msmax]

I think both perform well.
Choose your device on your requirements(I/O and Perif.) and check the lowest price.

Both are well supported for programming in C, Basic or Assembler. Both have a lot of circuits flying around for easy and cheap to make programmers as well as software to download to the controller.

I prefer PIC because I'm more familiar with them and the assembler used by Microchip, but I think it is just a matter of spending time to get familiarised with the Atmels.

Important is that a PIC running on 4 Mhz actually is running internally on 1 Mhz(divide by 4), which is not the case for Atmel.

 

[panalog9]

You'll find that the Atmel AVR is easier to work with in general, though there is a larger 'net presense for the PIC. I find AVR support and resources to be perfectly fine though, and there are many projects out there with them.

The main thing is the non-pages memory - I *hate* that obsolete architecture that the PIC uses. The one-clockcycle/one-instruction deal with the AVR is pretty nice too

 

[CADDevil]

PIC/Atmel ?

IMHO both of them are good. I started with PIC, couple of years ago, I started to be more oriented to Atmel, because Microchip did not have any bigger uC with FLASH memory.
Now, when I need I2C or I need to write program in ASM, I use PICs. When I need to write program in C, I use Atmel.

 

[msmax]

panalog9:

Good point. I forget to tell about the memory pages which you have to pre select for bit/file opreations for certain registers.

This is really very unhandy. If you forget about this then it is a pain to troubleshoot your firmware.

Maybe this is a reason to look closer to the Atmels,but on the other hand once you know...

 

[mrmookiebud]

I have used both Atmel and PIC and both have merits and the community support is good. Lately I have leaned toward Atmel because of the ease when working with the boot loading flash parts. Also, I found the dev tools a little cheaper and better engineered - particularily when working in C. Just my opinion though.

 

[runner100]

I prefer Pics as they are much cheaper and also the basic compiler for Pic s is easier to learn IE Picbasicpro

 

[DavidP]

Try both, learn them and use them as needed for youe specific project.

David

 

[direnc]

C'mon guys, 12X 14X 16X PICa are archaic and very cumbersome in terms of architecture. As far as i know what made them so popular is that they were the first microcontrollers to go that small in package and price.

Atmels are way faster and more elegant chips.

 

[Kripton2035]

the pics are cheaper. the atmel seems more elegant.
the "old" architecture of the pics (i.e. changing manually the page bank) is well handled by the compilers (basic or c). that's only if you want to use the assembler.