Continued development for AVR8?

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plutonic
 
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Continued development for AVR8?

Post by plutonic »

I recently found out Microchip has some new lines of AVR processors (AVR-1 including ATTiny816, 1616, and 3216) that are significant improvements over the old ATTiny85. It would be great for AVR users if Adafruit brought out new Trinkets and Feathers with these chips. I know you don't discuss specific forthcoming products, so I'm asking in a more general and philosophical way: do you consider the AVR to be a legacy architecture, with everything moving to ARM and RP2040, ESP32 etc.?

The thing I like about the ATTiny1616 (16k flash, 1k ram, i.e. 2x an ATTiny85 plus it has multiplication hardware and segmented flash and 1-wire programming/debugging instead of needing the 6 wire AVRISP), is that it is available in a 3x3mm QFN20 package that is great for wearables and other small circuits. No ARM that I know of is in a package that small other than WLCSP which really needs machine assembly, from what I gather.

Any thoughts?

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by Franklin97355 »

With libraries and compilers using more property the small micro have been relegated to the boneyard. the processors are more capable than in the past.

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plutonic
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by plutonic »

Thanks! I'm happy to have a more powerful processor, but the package MUST be tiny, like the 3x3 mm AVR. Is there anything like that out there?

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westfw
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by westfw »

How big do you need the BOARD to be?
Aren't the QT Py boards (SAMD21 and RP2040) already smaller than the Trinkets (ok; shorter but a bit fattter?)

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plutonic
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by plutonic »

The trinket/feather/whatever would be a dev board. The actual board would be smaller, like 12mm diameter circular to fit on top of an AAA battery would be great. And there has to be other stuff on the board besides the MCU.

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westfw
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by westfw »

Ah! I nice thing (a REALLY nice thing) about an open-source environment like Arduino is that you don't need to be dependent on a single Vendor.
Just because Adafruit seems Python-focused and Arduino seems IoT-focused doesn't mean that SOMEONE isn't "picking up the slack" and supporting the new generation(s) of AVRs.

For ATtiny1616, you could take a look at Spence Konde's (aka "Dr Azzy") work on MegaTinyCore and development boards available on Tindie (There are some tinier ATtiny1616 boards on Tindie from other vendors. But Spence is more of an "all the stuff you need" provider.) (There's a port of Optiboot, too, for potential serial upload. Although I'm not sure how important that is with UPDI being more convenient than ISP programming.)

Now, a 3rd party Arduino Core with some boards on Tindie probably isn't up to the level of support you'd get from Adafruit, but it sounds like your long-term plan is to build things yourself, so it might be sufficient for your needs.

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plutonic
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by plutonic »

Thanks. The boards on Tindie look ok and I might get a few. But, it sounds like there is not much future for AVR in the Arduino or Maker worlds, so it will become a niche item. For some reason, vendors of MCU's with reasonable amounts of memory want to put in high numbers of pins, which means bigger packages. I don't really understand why that is. I'd like to have a version of the 1616 in the SOT23-6 package currently used only by the lowest end AVR's.

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plutonic
 
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Re: Continued development for AVR8?

Post by plutonic »

Well nice, there is an attiny817 board now: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5233

Hey Adafruit, any chance of these with bigger parts? 1616/1617 or 3217 would be fantastic. But I will include one of these 817 boards in my next order of course.

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