Re: [avr-chat] What does potential Microchip buy out of Atmel mean forfuture of AVR?

[Xiaofan Chen]

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Bob Paddock <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thursday 02 October 2008 05:22:18 pm Weddington, Eric wrote:
>
>> Remember, the news reports says that this an *offer* to buy the company.
>> The news reports also say that discussions between the CEO took place in
>> early September and that Atmel's Board of Directors *declined* the offer at
>> that time.
>
> Yes, that did happen in September, this happened yesterday (Oct 2/2008):
>
> http://www.eetimes.eu/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605347&cid=NL_eeteu
>
> "We feel our offer is too compelling not to take it to shareholders," said
> Steve Sanghi, chairman, president and CEO at Microchip, during a conference
> call with analysts following the announcement of the offer on Thursday (Oct.
> 2). "We came to this point after we heard from Atmel that they were not
> interested."
>

Rest assured that they will keep AVR lines, and majority of the MCU
lines like ARM7/ARM9 and the to be released Cortex M3 line and hopefully
the 8051 line (not so sure about AVR32 and the 4bit line).

Microchip's Sanghi: Why we want Atmel
      http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605543&cid=NL_eet

With Microchip's stand of not obsoleting a product (they almost never do it),
the AVR customers will be happy. In my previous job, we used PIC and
AVR at the same time. In my current job, we use Atmel 8051 and ARM7
MCUs, I am not worried about the bid should the bid goes through. I
will no longer worry about the product obsolescence issue. Atmel just
obsoleted some 5V EEPROMs which caused us a few redesigns
switching to Microchip EEPROMs.

Xiaofan