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From: David Brown on 10 Jun 2010 06:14
On 10/06/2010 11:05, Jon Kirwan wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:55:11 +0200, David Brown
> <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>
>> On 10/06/2010 00:15, Jon Kirwan wrote:
>>> On Wed, 9 Jun 2010 18:46:50 +0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley
>>> <clubley(a)remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>
>>>> PIC: The Microsoft of the embedded world.
>>>>
>>>> (eg: great marketing, lousy architecture :-))
>>>
>>> It is about great support not great marketing. Engineers
>>> doing design aren't long fooled by marketing.
>>>
>>> Microsoft worked hard (and illegally, it turned out) to
>>> control market channels and sells into what is basically a
>>> broad-based, largely ignorant marketplace. Microchip sells
>>> to well-informed engineers and so far as I'm aware hasn't
>>> acted to force illegal contract terms onto distributers.
>>>
>>> Microchip simply supports their customers well and that
>>> counts for something with engineers in the end.
>>
>> I'm not sure I agree here. A huge percentage of Microchip's user base
>> are /uninformed/ engineers.
>
> Okay. So you are arguing that uninformed design engineers
> are like windows computer buyers?
>

No, I am arguing that people with little or no experience of
microcontrollers are likely to pick a device that appears popular. PICs
turn up pretty quickly in any search on the web, or "learn to use
microcontrollers" books.

Whenever someone starts looking at a new topic, they are "uninformed" by
definition. Microchip targets this area very successfully.

I have no facts or figures to back this up, but I would expect that most
PIC users used PICs as their first microcontroller. Relatively few will
have switched from other devices to PICs.

> I can't go there. I am tempted, at times. But no.
>
>> People pick Microchip and PICs because
>> that's the microcontroller they've heard of. When you are looking for
>> your first microcontroller, you don't know much about a company's
>> support - you probably don't even /think/ about support until later on
>> when you are having problems.
>>
>> Microchip have made a very strong commitment to marketing their devices
>> to small users - hobby users, students, small companies, and other
>> first-time microcontroller users. That's how they get their customers -
>> companies pick them because their developers are already familiar with
>> the devices from their hobby days.
>>
>> Great support is how Microchip /keep/ their customers. Great marketing,
>> especially aimed at small users, is how they get the customers in the
>> first place.
>
> Well, I think we agree on the "keep" part, of course. But
> the rest doesn't really dispute what I was addressing. The
> person I was writing to was summing up Microchip in a
> Microsoft comparison, implying that it's all just marketing.
> And I know Microchip's success is not _all_ marketing or even
> half marketing. I'll leave it there, though.
>

I certainly agree that Microchip's popularity is not all marketing - I
just think that their marketing strategy of targeting small users is a
big contributor to their popularity. This is in no way a bad thing or a
derogatory comment - good marketing is important to businesses.

It is not remotely like Microsoft's business practices. But even their
success is not all due to marketing - some of it is due to coercion,
bribery, and other illegal or unethical business practices.

From: David Brown on 10 Jun 2010 06:21
On 10/06/2010 11:01, Jon Kirwan wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:57:56 +0200, "Meindert Sprang"
> <ms(a)NOJUNKcustomORSPAMware.nl> wrote:

>> Reading AVR assembler to me is so much more 'logical' than PIC assembly.
>
> Hehe. Well, okay. One could just as well argue that the PIC
> is more like _exposed_ logic, which technically makes it
> "more logical" in another sense. It's more like what you'd
> do if you only had 7400 series SSI to work with. And it is
> quite logical from that standpoint. But yes, I enjoyed AVR
> assembly just fine. A few gripes made me wonder "why?,"
> though.

The key to understanding Microchip PIC assembly is to view it as
lower-level than "normal" assembly language - it's closer to a sort of
microcode. If you view the "w" register as a sort of internal temporary
storage within an ALU, rather than a "normal" register, then it all
makes more sense. At least, it did to me when I worked with it about
ten years ago.
From: Walter Banks on 10 Jun 2010 06:48


David Brown wrote:

> > Microchip simply supports their customers well and that
> > counts for something with engineers in the end.
> >
>
> . . .
>
> Great support is how Microchip /keep/ their customers. Great marketing,
> especially aimed at small users, is how they get the customers in the
> first place.

This says it all. In practice Microchip has done a good job at every
customer level. A lot of silicon companies could learn a lot about the
way Microchip deals with their customers when they meet them at
trade shows and promotional events and annual user conferences.
All of these meetings have substance backed by user notes, reference
designs and hard information. Microchip's after sales support is
second to none.

They know better than most companies how their product can
be used competitively and aggressively go after that market.

Regards,


w..
--
Walter Banks
Byte Craft Limited
http://www.bytecraft.com







From: Simon Clubley on 10 Jun 2010 09:04
On 2010-06-10, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:
> On 10/06/2010 00:15, Jon Kirwan wrote:
>> On Wed, 9 Jun 2010 18:46:50 +0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley
>> <clubley(a)remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>
>>> PIC: The Microsoft of the embedded world.
>>>
>>> (eg: great marketing, lousy architecture :-))
>>
>> It is about great support not great marketing. Engineers
>> doing design aren't long fooled by marketing.
>>
>> Microsoft worked hard (and illegally, it turned out) to
>> control market channels and sells into what is basically a
>> broad-based, largely ignorant marketplace. Microchip sells
>> to well-informed engineers and so far as I'm aware hasn't
>> acted to force illegal contract terms onto distributers.
>>
>> Microchip simply supports their customers well and that
>> counts for something with engineers in the end.
>>
>
> I'm not sure I agree here. A huge percentage of Microchip's user base
> are /uninformed/ engineers. People pick Microchip and PICs because
> that's the microcontroller they've heard of. When you are looking for
> your first microcontroller, you don't know much about a company's
> support - you probably don't even /think/ about support until later on
> when you are having problems.
>
> Microchip have made a very strong commitment to marketing their devices
> to small users - hobby users, students, small companies, and other
> first-time microcontroller users. That's how they get their customers -
> companies pick them because their developers are already familiar with
> the devices from their hobby days.
>

Exactly.

[To everyone: don't forget that unlike most people in this newsgroup,
I am a hobbyist when it comes to embedded work so the issues which matter
to me are very different from those which matter to you. You are looking
for support for your commercial product; I am more concerned with been
able to use the devices in a home development environment.]

When I started out, I didn't really have an opinion about which then
current microcontroller to choose. I did however see PIC been pushed to
the hobbyist in places like Maplin and I saw that Microchip had a lot of
support in various ways for the hobbyist user.

The comparison to Microsoft is because I realised that Microchip knew,
like Microsoft, that if you spent time and money targeting the hobbyist,
you stood a higher chance of the hobbyist recommending your products when
they got into a work environment.

Support for the hobbyist user, even when it costs money, can be regarded
as a form of marketing as you are using that support as a way of trying to
draw new people into using your products in the future.

However, I made sure I evaluated all the architectures which met my needs
at the time so I ended up rejecting PIC in favour of the HC08 and then the
AVR.

(So I did make an engineering type choice instead of a "what's popular"
choice after all. :-))

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley(a)remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world
From: Jon Kirwan on 10 Jun 2010 13:08
On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:21:13 +0200, David Brown
<david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> wrote:

>On 10/06/2010 11:01, Jon Kirwan wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:57:56 +0200, "Meindert Sprang"
>> <ms(a)NOJUNKcustomORSPAMware.nl> wrote:
>
>>> Reading AVR assembler to me is so much more 'logical' than PIC assembly.
>>
>> Hehe. Well, okay. One could just as well argue that the PIC
>> is more like _exposed_ logic, which technically makes it
>> "more logical" in another sense. It's more like what you'd
>> do if you only had 7400 series SSI to work with. And it is
>> quite logical from that standpoint. But yes, I enjoyed AVR
>> assembly just fine. A few gripes made me wonder "why?,"
>> though.
>
>The key to understanding Microchip PIC assembly is to view it as
>lower-level than "normal" assembly language - it's closer to a sort of
>microcode. If you view the "w" register as a sort of internal temporary
>storage within an ALU, rather than a "normal" register, then it all
>makes more sense. At least, it did to me when I worked with it about
>ten years ago.

Since I've actually designed ONE actual, functional micro
with logic gates and actually ran programs on it with a
display and had it work (after much wrangling to fix my
errors), I can with some modest authority generally agree
with that. And I don't find it a problem. It works well
enough.

Jon
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