What Bill said is another point. I just talked to a Microchip guy and he mentioned this as well. As a matter of fact I just complained to him about the pricing/delivery policy of Microchip. They start to consider us a small customer with annual turnover of half a million US$ (and will grow if we are happy with them). They got very big customers in Singapore and ASEAN like Delphi Automotive, Creative Technology and others. Then I talked to the another colleague in another division, he told me that we have major issues with Atmel due to EMC and other performance problem. So for high reliability product, they are now considering Microchip in the low end and Renesas in the high end. AVR has slow AD conversion time of 65us-260us (ATtiny 26 datasheet pp77). Silabs C8051 is very good in this aspect. We have also got a letter of assurance from them that "In general, Silicon Laboratories, Inc. will not obsolete the device if a customer is actively purchasing it in quantities above l0k/year." That is not too bad. We will use one of their product in a new design. But their price is not so cheap. The reason why Atmel is losing money may be due to what REB said in his post. :) I wonder if they are just using their low cost to lure customers and then obsolete all their MCUs in two years. That will be a big trouble for us and a lot of others as well. I do have my reservations about Microchip but I definitely has more reservations about Atmel. So maybe we have to go to another company? The low-pin count Freescale MCU has too high current consumption (about 6mA when using the built-in OSC) for me to use though. Their pricing is now very good. The Microchip guy told me it is because they write off a lot of their property and now in a very good shape. I do not know it is true or not. Motorola SPS used to be not a very friendly company. What are your opinipns? I am talking about low cost families (those below US$2.0 with 10k to 50k quantity). Xiaofan ----- >Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 00:32:42 -0800 >From: William "Chops" Westfield >> IMHO, there are two strong disadvantages for the AVR family. >> >I'd feel warmer and fuzzier if Atmel were making money, too, instead >of leaking red ink all over... > >Microchip and Freescale are credible "single source" manufacturers; I'm >not so sure about atmel. Sigh. > >BillW ------ >Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 11:39:17 -0500 >From: "Roy E. Burrage" > >And when Atmel obsoletes a product they replace it with one that will >fit in the same hole but has more bells and whistles for less money, >from my experience. > >REB _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist