In 2001-2002 we were working with an ATMEL ARM7TDMI that my client had decided was the right part for his product. It had on-board DSP's and codec's SDRAM channel, PIO, SIO, and ethernet, among other features. It also had a "bootloader" on board and, of course, purported to have a boot rom.

Their EVB was very costly (Over $1000). The first thing we found was that the "bootloader" didn't work, and their on-chip boot rom was absent. Soon enough, we found, too, that their SDRAM channel didn't work. They sold us an SRAM board (too small, and designed such that one could only use one of them.) Much of their software didn't work.

It was clear from the outset that they were unwilling to take responsibility for any of their engineering failures and, as time wore on, they tried to convince me that the reason their stuff didn't work was because I didn't know enough about the ARM architecture.

After we'd invested a year and a half, not to mention buying a bunch of worthless hardware that they said worked, but later admitted didn't, they withdrew the product from the market. Naturally, their highly touted and emphatically promoted software didn't work either.

We subsequently switched to a SAMSUNG ARM7TDMI and, later, a MICREL ARM9 part, all of which worked perfectly and all of whose support hardware and software worked very well. The EVB's for those other ARM's cost on the order of $200 and were complete with fully functional software, including runnable versions of LINUX, which were very useful and helpful.

We removed ATMEL from the approvable suppliers list, and none of my clients have, since then, considered using anything from ATMEL. The disqualification of ATMEL has not proved to be a problem in any way, and I can only guess how much trouble it has saved us.

RE