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Atmel announced a new AVR in an SOT-23-6 package. The 2x3 mm package is widely used by Microchip already in many applications, like power suppliers or LED drivers and it was the only one on the market till now. The new born chip has the same pin-out as the PIC10F, however, contains the fast AVR core with the enhanced instruction set, interrupt handling, 4 channel ADC and 16 bit timer with PWM module.

Micrcochip Corp. announced that they acquired Hi-Tech Software, so from now the popular PICC compiler belongs to Microchip. The two companies already had a good relationship. PICC was included already in the standard MPLAB installation as Microchip did not have C compilers for the 12 and 14 bit architecture. Also it seems that Microchip will gain advantage of the opportunity of owning a more sophisticated compiler design so that they will pushing the PICC compilers on other platforms as well like 18F, 24H, dsPIC and 32 bit family.

Hi-Tech
Microchip announcement

Google, the provider of our favourite search engine and other useful softwares has changed its favicon on 9th January, 2009. The favicon is a small picture that a graphical browser displays in the URL bar next to the page's name. Favicon can also appear in a list of bookmarks or next to the page's title in a tabbed document interface. New Google favicon

After the successful PICkit1 and PICkit2 Microchip is going to release the 3rd version of the popular debugger / programmer / data logger. The announcement does not contain detailed technical information, all we know at the moment is that it's compatible with the ICD2 and 3 header boards and has full short circuit and over voltage protection. The release date is going to be on the January of 2009 with the price tag of $69.99.

Microchip announced the long waited new enhanced core for the mid-range product line. The new core has many improvements including 14 new instructions that can boost up the performance. Together with the reorganised RAM, the new interrupt handler and the enhanced secondary index register it is now a competitor to the AVR product line.

Finally ICD3 is out. It uses the same interface as for the ICD2 or the Real ICE, however, it has a fast USB connection thanks to the FPGA design. Microchip was definitely not keeping in mind hobby users when they put the price tag on: It is around $220. Also because of the FPGA design we will not see clones very soon.

Microchip has announced today of the acquisition of Atmel. The announcement was a big surprise to everyone as both companies believed to be stable on market with their unique technologies. Some of the Atmel's microcontrollers ranked higher as for example the 8 bit controllers have a faster CPU but the last couple of years Microchip improved their product line with highly advanced chips like the 32 bit series. It is a mystery why Microchip needs Atmel to buy but hopefully the outcome will be an advance for everyone.

The unPIC project started around two years ago and now found a new home on MCUhobby.com. unPIC is an open source and free of charge software that disassembles PIC binary to Assembly source.

PICkit2 is a very powerful PIC-programmer made by Microchip. Beause of the original manufacturer has published the whole schematic and the firmware running in the device we have the chance to rebuild it. This clone is quite popular as it is very easy to rebuild and is a reliable tool for the hobbyist.