IAR Systems announced AVR32 support in IAR Embedded Workbench and claims reduction of overall power consumption by as much as 30%.

Let me think for a moment what that tells me about the AVRstudio. Does Atmel provide tools to their customers that waste up to 30% of the power savings? AVRstudio is the major tool chain out in the field supporting AVR32. As Mr. Øyvind Strøm, Atmel’s director for AVR32 products is also quoted in the underlying press release, there must be some truth to the statement, or what do you think?  .... 

There is most definitely a significant point to be made about efficient tools and power savings. If a compiler is able to create code that is executed faster that indicates in general lower power consumption although there is a significant difference in power consumption between a NOP and a complex arithmetic operation. Using less but more power hungry instructions might lead to less or no reduction in power. 

The announcement of the AVR32 AT32UC3L has already stretched the borderline between facts and fiction and now we find this claim that is a significant challenge to my believes of differences between tools. While I am a believer in commercial, high quality tools such as the IAR workbench, I do not believe that statements like the 30% power savings help either one company IAR or Atmel. 

Quote: "For a typical application utilizing sleep mode, the optimizations in IAR Embedded Workbench reduces the execution time by up to 30%, and consequently lowers overall power consumption by as much as 30%." 

Is it just me or does anybody else feel a little odd when an application using sleep mode reduces execution time by 30%? Does that mean the programs reduces time in sleep mode by 30%. Let's assume what the press release was supposed to say is that the application spends 30% more time in sleep mode because the execution in active mode is 30% faster, hence 30% additional idle time.

Øyvind Strøm, Atmel’s director for AVR32 products comments, “With the AVR32 UC3L family Atmel has created the world’s first picoPower 32 bit MCU...." Here it is again my favorite term of the other press release "picoPower" indicating picoAmps or pW, both being off by a Gigafactor (x10⁹), meaning the reality is about 1 Billion times a pico_xxx because we are talking milli_xxx. Read more about this one here.

Please don't get me wrong, the IAR Embedded Workbench is an excellent development tool, the AVR32 is a competitive MCU and both make a nice pairing. It is the marketing wording that ridicules both announcements and the claims that are unachievable in an every day's environment.