Microchip Technology to Buy Atmel for Nearly $3.6B

Well, this isn&#x27;t a particularly insightful comment, but my feelings about this are &quot;fark :[&quot;. The AVR definitely has something Nordic about it. I first learned C when programming an AVR Butterfly eval board to take photos like [0] using [1]. I&#x27;ve found the AVR architecture to be much cleaner than 8 or 16 bit PICs. Atmel, for the most part, embraced GPL and GCC. Microchip has tried to squirrel GCC optimization features away from being truly FOSS.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.staticflickr.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;53&#x2F;115619170_4445c593cd_o.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.staticflickr.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;53&#x2F;115619170_4445c593cd_o.jpg</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.staticflickr.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;56&#x2F;112758047_dc5b4bdc3b_o.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;c1.staticflickr.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;56&#x2F;112758047_dc5b4bdc3b_o.jpg</a>

Great... more consolidation of major competitors to fix market problems like great features and prices from competition. Just what we needed.

I see a disconnect. Somebody knowledgeable, please comment.<p>here it goes :<p>Atmel had a deal with Dialog Semiconductor worth 4.6 Billion Dollars on September 15 already, refer [0] [1].<p>Microchip manage to break that deal with 137 Million dollar termination fee, but with a deal worth of 3.6 Billion Dollars.<p>That&#x27;s 1 Billion dollars &quot;less&quot; deal worth agreed by Atmel to be sold.<p>Sounds unbelievable!<p>MCHP managed to do this by giving more cash for Atmel shareholders? (..and not to forget 137 M of termination fine.)<p>1 Billion dollar (which was imaginary) disappeared into thin air??<p>If it was not of real value, then how &#x2F; why Dialog over valued it?<p>Whoever understands all this, please comment.<p>[0] : <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dialog-semiconductor.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;dialog-semiconductor-acquire-atmel-46-billion" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dialog-semiconductor.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;dialog-semicondu...</a> [1] : <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;dialog-buying-atmel&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;09&#x2F;21&#x2F;dialog-buying-atmel&#x2F;</a>

This popped up earlier (w&#x2F; 20 comments as of now): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10939576" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10939576</a>

This is surprising news to me. An analog with the microprocessor market would be Intel buying AMD!<p>I love Microchip&#x27;s application notes. My first controller was a PIC16F877A and apart from the architecture quirks (and mediocre C compiler support) it is a good processor for beginners. In that sense, this acquisition nicely complements MT&#x27;s own strengths.<p>I&#x27;m still not sure how I feel about the monopolization of the uC though.

From my own experience, this might be a good time for Atmel employees to polish their resumes.

This is a huge relief compared to the proposed acquisition by Dialog. Microchip is vastly more open. Crazily enough, You have to apply for a copy of a data sheet from Dialog instead of it being freely available on their website for everyone to download..

I commented in the other thread <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10939576" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10939576</a>:<p>&gt;People in this thread keep talking like this is the &quot;death&quot; of Atmel. I don&#x27;t see it changing much other than being guided by Microchip management to meet higher profit margins. If you think that Atmel&#x27;s compilers and IDE&#x27;s are going to be dropped overnight in favor of MPLAB X and Microchip compilers, you are almost surely mistaken; there&#x27;s a big gap between architectures so it would be a lot of work to get Microchip tools to support Atmel parts.

Cool, maybe now it&#x27;ll be possible to obtain Atmel chips in quantity without ridiculous lead times.

I wounder if this will this bring the death of the original Arduino.