Microchip acquires Atmel??

[ruffrecords]

I just got a news update from Atmel saying they have been acquired by Microchip. Where does this leave the Arduino?

Cheers

Ian

 

[Andy Peters]

I just got a news update from Atmel saying they have been acquired by Microchip. Where does this leave the Arduino?

Unknown right now, of course, and it all depends on whether Microchip sees value in keeping the non-PIC 8-bit parts in production. A lot of watchers think that Microchip wanted an 32-bit ARM solution because PIC32 hasn't been a big winner for them. And Atmel has been looking for a buyer. So from that perspective the deal makes sense.

Arduino gets a lot of Maker ink (and pixels), but Microchip really likes the high-volume market, and in that world Arduino is a blip on the radar.

 

[audiomixer]

arduino is not so much about the chip, more about the abstraction layer enabling non tech people mess around with microcontrollers. it would be good if microchip would learn from the arduino comunity and deliver a simple toolchain for the non tech people. tipixally this doesn't happen though. the diy community has lots of other options, from TI to gecko to more powerfull arm based solutions. nothing to worry about I think.

- Michael

 

[JohnRoberts]

I won't pretend to know anything useful about this but indeed microchip would be silly to blow off the arduino community.

I like microchip parts but the toolchain has always been a weak link, at least I can't imagine it being much worse.

JR

 

[Rochey]

Arduino has been ported to plenty of other processors, arm and msp430 at the least.

The whole point of Arduino is that the actual device is not important.

R