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Can I use PIC and Atmel microcontrollers together in the same project or system?

Mike
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NeverMind
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  • Why wouldnt you be able to? you can use as many same or different components as your project desires, now you can end up with board so large it is not manufacturable or at least the yield is too low. You could easily have one or microcontrollers from each of the vendors, as well as full blown processors from each of the vendors and a slew of peripherals. what other than board real estate and manufacturability would you think prevents you from this? – old_timer Feb 02 '16 at 03:46
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    You question isn't specific enough. "in the same project or system" says nothing. Do they have to communicate? What is the intended interconnection and function? The question really lacks background. – Rev Feb 02 '16 at 07:05

2 Answers2

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It's certainly possible. Make sure power rail is compatible with both types. Also, you will be dealing with two toolchains and spend money on two programming fixtures.

Oleg Mazurov
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Yes, you can use as many as micro controllers in your system. Obviously the operating voltages should match up if both of them are going to be powered by the same power supply. Also, if you have a not so good (i.e. bad - poor voltage regulated) power supply, you may want to consider about the brown out limits of the two micro controllers as well since one micro controller may stop working well before the other and you will not get the benefit. People do often use two or many micro controllers in the same system to get good isolation between the sections of the system (for example, you have two regions in the same board that require isolation and you need some processing to be done in the two regions, you may ended up using two micros).

SamR
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