back to article The great silicon slurp of 2015 continues: Atmel next on the shopping block

Another instalment in this year's consolidation in the silicon market appears to be on the cards, with reports emerging that microcontroller outfit Atmel is looking for a buyer. As Reuters reports, the company's CEO, Steve Laub, is due to retire at the end of August, something that may have sparked the decision to seek …

  1. ChrisJC

    If it is Microchip, I hope they use it to ditch their hideous PIC architecture lineup and promote the vastly superior AVR8 kit instead.

    Chris.

    1. Sandgroper

      Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are somethings that Microchip does that is difficult to comprehend, such as a serial port in an embedded system that will lock up in the event of a comms error. On the other hand Atmel have their own problems, such that a WDT that can be enabled in software but not disabled in software requiring a processor reset. Or how about lacking a processor RESET instruction.

      IMHO the PIC24/dsPIC33 is a vast improvement on both their own and Atmel's 8 bit processors.

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