Atmel Avr Risc


We started prototyping with the Atmel AVR TinyTwelve. We have moved most of or work to the more functional TinyFortyFive. The primary advantages of the latter are:

  • Compiler Support -- The Mega 8 has fancy things that the C compilers have grown to expect, like ram.

  • Self Programing -- The Mega 8 can alter its own flash program memory. Can viruses be far behind?

  • Dispatch Instruction -- It drove me nuts that the Tiny 12 didn't have a register based jump instruction. Never mind what I say in EscapingAddresses.


We once though we'd use the surface mount MegaEight for commercially made boards of our own unique design. We're having too much fun with our prototyping style to bother with that hassle.


Visit the Atmel site for lots of product and product line information.

From the web site ...

Atmel's AVR microcontrollers have a RISC core running single cycle instructions and a well-defined I/O structure that limits the need for external components. Internal oscillators, timers, UART, SPI, pull-up resistors, pulse width modulation, ADC, analog comparator and watch-dog timers are some of the features you will find in AVR devices.

AVR instructions are tuned to decrease the size of the program whether the code is written in C or Assembly. With on-chip in-system programmable Flash and EEPROM, the AVR is a perfect choice in order to optimize cost and get product to the market quickly.


Note: AVR is a brand name for a line of microcontrollers. We say Atmel AVR the same way we say Intel Pentium.

 

Last edited February 2, 2008
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