PIC vs AVR #30 #2

This is the second part of the pic and avr. One of the benefit of the avr is programming.

For the programming or firmware development avr gives AVR studio which is a very good IDE and most important for beginner is it's free. AVR studio gives most of the libraries for their micro controllers and also for the different boards made by ATMEL. 

Also one of the most important benefit that you get from AVR's 8 bit controllers is arduino. Arduino is a open source project. You can visit www.arduino.cc for more informations. Its based on AVR and most popular is ATMEGA328. You can use almost any other microcontrollers. 

For the beginners who are not so into the hardware of microcontroller thing and also with the hardware or internal things of the controller. Arduino make programming so easy that any can interface any hardware to it.

PIC on the other hand also provide their own IDE, MPLAB X , it uses a separate compiler. The bad thing is its not free. There's also a free version which does all the job done for the beginner but what the free version is not giving us is maximum code optimization . Paid version of MPLAB  gives the maximum optimization which is more that 50 % of the code size of the free version. 

PIC also provide some of the libraries for its users , also MIKRO C gives some simple programming interface for the PIC which is the third party PIC IDE. 

These are some of the things to compare between the PIC and AVR. Further on its on you to choose between PIC or AVR. 

PIC VS AVR MICROCONTROLLER #29 #1

For the starters it is always the question in mind whether to use PIC microcontroller or AVR microcontroller. PIC manufacutred by MICROCHIP and AVR by ATMEL is beginner level 8 bit micorcontrollers which every beginner use.

If your starting a project or starting to learn some more on controllers which to follow. I list out some of my points on both controllers their pros and cons.

Moving on to PIC ,  PIC's 8 bit series 16F and 18F are the most popular one. These PIC controllers are available in package like SSOP,SOIC,DIP,QFN,QFP. 

If your project is power sensitive PIC is the best. PIC's nanoWatt XLP series have very low power. They in even go to micro Ampere current range when in Deep Sleep. Though AVRs got the power control like sleep, stand by modes but PIC is better than AVR in this matter.

Other benefit that PICs got is PIC has more features in chip than AVR. They have more peripheral fetures and control than AVR . PICS got many standard like ECAN, more CCP and ECCP channels and controls more AD converter channels than AVR. 

Its not like AVR got no such feature AVR's also got the same feature but AVR's got less flexibility in these things. 

Thing in which AVR dominates PIC is in my case TIMERS, In AVR timers got more controls than in PIC. Handling timers in AVR is always easy than PIC.

In term of cost both are same , but some PICs are cheaper in compared to AVR.