Atmel has announced that its six pin ATtiny10 microcontroller can provide six times the performance of any similar sized microcontroller in the market.

The picoPower AVR ATtiny10 has 1Kbytes of programmable flash memory and 32bytes of internal SRAM. It features up to 12MIPS of processing throughput, 8bit A/D converter, analog comparator and a 16bit timer with PWM.

Using the AVR CPU, the ATtiny10 is said to provide six times the performance of any other similar sized microcontroller in the market. Designed to reduce the time in active mode, increases the time spent in power saving sleep modes. The only similar product that has been on the market for 5 years is the PIC10F family. It really depends on the applications whether a device with 32 bytes of RAM needs more performance or if the lowest price will be the most important feature? The published price for the PIC10F starts at $0.29 in 10k quantities, the ATtiny10 at $0.35. My guess,in high quantities they will be very similar.

The internal oscillator of the PIC10 and the ATtiny have similar characteristics but the PIC has a better specification towards the absolute value of 4 MHz. It is a workable solution to use a temp range from 0C-85C and a voltage range between 2.5V and 5.5V and have a max. frequency tolerance of +/- 2%. Tha's if you need this kind of tolerance for a UART, if not, the internal oscillator of the tiny does just fine. Temperature drift plus voltage drift of the tiny are up to 5% each from min to max. voltage or temperature. Do not attempt to use this device to emulate a serial interface, your data might get lost or worse falsified. 

Power comparison:
The AVR (based on figure 17-4 in the preliminary Datasheet) uses about 220 uAs running at 1 MHz, 2V. The PIC10F220 needs 175 uAs running at 4 MHz, where it has the same performance as the 1 MHz AVR.

Battery life:
There are many parameters that contribute to the extension of battery life. One important factor is the minimum voltage you can use the MCU. According to the DS, that is 1.8V for the ATtiny while 2.0V for the PIC10. This difference can already make up for the difference in current. 

Temperature range:
Most applications will do just fine with industrial temp range as it is offered by the ATtiny, if you need -40/125C the PIC10F200 series offers this one too.

Peformance:
No need to go into more details here, the ATtiny wins hands down, no matter what the voltage range is. 5V offers 12x the performance, 2.7V 8x performance and all the way down to 1.8V still 4x the performance. If you need more than 1 instruction / usec, there is only one option, the ATtiny.

If you are interested for an in depth comparison of the two families you can purchase a 5 page report for $299 by requesting it from
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it