ATMEL What is happening

[microkid]

All of a sudden ATMEL's AVR parts are out of stock and the prices are high.

Can any one tell what is going on there and why this shortage is??

Iam a micro consumer (say 100 parts/month). Please advice Is it the time for switch over to other micro or shall i wait

Thanks for any info

MicroKid

[wedo]

The problem is caused by the financial storm; most chip manufacturers became conservative and not optimistic about the economy; they layoff and change the production plan by reducing their production quantity. But somethings is out of their prediction! The requirements are so strong in this year, many parts are sold out all around!

It is sure that the manufacturers will adjust their plan according to economy's recovery, but it will take some time. I expect it will recover in 2011!

I hope that!

[maduran]

I am an AVR user. I contacted an Atmel dealer and he told me that the company has all the production lines occupied with the large orders. The small users orders represents only 30% of the production capacities. This is a normal crisis decision. They passed a similar situation in 2000. A similar example is NEC for LCD's. In fact it is normal to be more carefully with the large orders.

Posted on: May 29, 2010, 09:41:33 21:41 - Automerged
It is not very easy to pass to another controller so fast. There are big differences between AVR and PIC products. In fact is very hard to replace an XMEGA or UC3 device, for example.

[pissant]

The problem is caused by the financial storm; most chip manufacturers became conservative and not optimistic about the economy; they layoff and change the production plan by reducing their production quantity. But somethings is out of their prediction! The requirements are so strong in this year, many parts are sold out all around!

This is true, but it occurred at the end of last year primarily. Starting around October/November orders started coming in to component and chip manufacturers. They had let their stock of parts deplete during the downturn and then had to quickly attempt to ramp up production again. This meant lots of parts shortages and long lead times for even relatively common parts like capacitors and inductors.

My experience over the last month is that these shortages are no longer an issue. Of course, I don't have anything by Atmel in my designs so hey might still be going through the same problems. My experience with Atmel is that while the engineering teams are great, the management is not particularly good. I wouldn't be surprised if they screwed up once again.

[kayvee]

Atmel has a long sad history of lead times being all over the place which is a bit scary to say the least.

After many long and stressful hours of development time, development deadlines, moved design goal posts and the like, an added complication of unpredictable and varying lead times is not what you want when you shiny new design finally drums up some market interest.

I've been personally bitten by this in the past, hence wherever possible I avoid Atmel like the plague.  There are alternatives for most parts from other manufacturers, so one has to take this into consideration way up front.

It's a pity, really.