N STEENKAMP [M.ING E&E] wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Last week I went to an Atmel AVR seminar for the first time.  It was
> interesting to see their angle of approach : They are really serious
> about competing head-on with the PIC.  All through the seminar, the
> presenter was pointing out the PIC's inadequacies.  At one stage he had a
> slide comparing a 16 bit subtraction on the PIC and the AVR.  I have
> never seen such a long 16 bit subtraction routine on a PIC in my life!
> It must have been at least 20 instructions!  The AVR routine was 2 or
> three instructions.  To be fair, the AVR would still beat the PIC on a 16
> bit subtract, even if they compared it to an optimized subtraction
> routine, but not by such a large margin.  And of course he did not
> mention the inefficient table read until he was asked about it.  Those are
> the ways of marketing...
Speaking of marketing, was the subject of I/O manipulation speed ever
initiated by Atmel ?
>
> We did get an AVR develoment board - which is quite nice - and a 1200 to
> start playing with.  They are also planning on adding loads of different
> devices and peripheral options in the ?near? future.
> What I do like about their core, anyway, is the true RISC architecture
> (no more moving to W before doing a calculation)
Above can easily be done on pic with two instruction macro.

, the support for >8 bit
> arithmetic and the large number of test and branch instructions (no
> more btfss - goto combinations).
Above is also done on PIC using special instruction Mnemonics, the
difference is that where as Microchip market usually 35 instructions,
Atmel start with 16 bits(same as PIC17Cxx) and subdivide some
instructions types into the jump variants etc. Atmel call this part of
their instruction set, where as with Microchip you have to be in the
know (use the "special instruction mnemonics") or using the PIC17Cxx
devices to be aware of these similarities.

  One core limitation I see is the fixed
> amount of registers (32).  On larger devices with RAM you would have to
> start to do a lot of moving between the register file and the RAM.
>
> If Atmel can compete in price (which is what matters, afterall), the AVR
> might just give Microchip a run for their money!
>
> (Don't worry, I have not been converted - I just keep my eyes open ;-)  )
>
> Niki