Hi.
I just saw that Microchip has created an online
purchase web page. (buy.microchip.com). Right now
only servering US customers, but other countries
are planed, they say.
Anyway, it seems to be quite competitive prices. The
single unit price of a 12F675-I/P ($1.81 USD) is lower
then the 100 unit price (in Sweden) from Farnell. Since
I'm a non-US, so I could not get any p&p value...
I also checked with Digikey, and thers single unit price
was a little bit higher then MC, but the 100 unit
prices was exactly the same (for the two chips I
checked, 18F252-I/SP and 12F675-I/P).
Anyone else seen this service ? Any thoughts about it ?
Doesn't the distributors normaly gets a bit "upset" when
a producer decides to bypass them and sell directly
to the customers ?
I don't understand why all big producers don't follow politics of DELL....
Delivering just in time and without problems and without any additional
costs... You can't imagine how difficult is to obtain some newer chips even
from Microchip here in Czech republic regulary. We are small firm and we
don't need more than a couple of thousands PICs a year.
Igor Pokorny wrote:
> ... You can't imagine how difficult is to obtain some
> newer chips even from Microchip here in Czech republic
> regulary. We are small firm and we don't need more than
> a couple of thousands PICs a year.
Igor,
I'm just trying to imagine, when you asked Microchip
distributors about purchasing, say, ten to hundred 18F442,
what reply did you use to get? Even here in Ukraine it
takes usually 2 days and 2$.
Mike.
--------------------
Microchip distributors in Czech Republic (listed on
Microchip site):
MES Praha s.r.o. Memec representative in Czech Republic
VESTEC, K Remizku 443
CZ-25242 Jesenice u Prahy
Czech Republic
TEL: (+420) 241-9334-1011
FAX: (+420) 241-9337-6527
Email: .....mesprahaKILLspam@spam@ms.anet.cz
-----------------------------------
I found that they have minimum buys in quantity of at least 100 or so.
As for them bypassing their distributors, a few years ago they dumped ALL of their reps and went only to distributors. I don't think they are worried too much about it, most of the distributors (except DIGIKEY and NEWARK) that I have worked with (ARROW, PIONEER, AVNET ... etc.) have all tried to get me to go to another processor. Perhaps it is just the fact that I live in Arizona and have some screwy reps. To be honest, most of the reps seem to do alot of MICROCHIP bashing, perhaps they get a smaller cut then some of the other companies pay!! I keep hearing "It's not a real competitor" or "It's just a toy", so now most of my PIC purchases are through DIGIKEY and I've told my MICROCHIP FAE why, apparently he wasn't too happy!!
Jan-erik_Svderholm_(QAC) <Jan-erik.SoderholmKILLspamPAC.ERICSSON.SE> wrote:
Hi.
I just saw that Microchip has created an online
purchase web page. (buy.microchip.com). Right now
only servering US customers, but other countries
are planed, they say.
Anyway, it seems to be quite competitive prices. The
single unit price of a 12F675-I/P ($1.81 USD) is lower
then the 100 unit price (in Sweden) from Farnell. Since
I'm a non-US, so I could not get any p&p value...
I also checked with Digikey, and thers single unit price
was a little bit higher then MC, but the 100 unit
prices was exactly the same (for the two chips I
checked, 18F252-I/SP and 12F675-I/P).
Anyone else seen this service ? Any thoughts about it ?
Doesn't the distributors normaly gets a bit "upset" when
a producer decides to bypass them and sell directly
to the customers ?
> Doesn't the distributors normaly gets a bit "upset" when
> a producer decides to bypass them and sell directly
> to the customers ?
Maybe, but Microchip was getting a little upset that their biggest
distributor was stocking less than half their product line. I think this is
a good move on Microchip's part, and a window into the future. With cheap
and easy e-commerce, the remaining value of distributors is that they do the
warehousing. If they won't do that, then there's not much point in paying
for the middleman.
*****************************************************************
Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts
(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com
It could be Digi-Keys own fault for charging more than Micro-chip, or they may have purchased these parts in a large volume and are still making a profit. Digi-Key is a very expensive company to get parts compared to many other companies I deal with. The only reason I would ever use digi-key is for unique items that are hard to find anywhere else and you just seem to have more money than time to deal with it.
I would purchase it based on price and delivery, it they meet my criteria, then they will get my business, otherwise, there is always other companies that sell their components.
Microchip processors are not just a toy, I have seen them used in many consumer, industrial and critical high-end applications. I find them to very reliable if you write the firmware correctly.
>"It's not a real competitor" or "It's just a toy"
Just a little thing thing.. The PIC's screwy architecture just so
happens to give a massive advantage in compiler design for executing the
frame based Java Virtual Machine which gives it at least a 5 fold
advantage for Object Orientated Processing over register/load/store
architectures.. AVR/8051.. Eat your heart out!
Check out the Metrics and think about a $2 PIC16F87 outrunning a $30
dedicated Java Silicon Ajile device.. Zoooom!
It may be better in Ucraine because it's bigger... It could sounds funny I
were told today we still were not able to use 12F629 instead of 12C509 (the
first is cheaper) because delivering will be late. I am sorry. We are
waiting for some 12 bit AD chips from Microchip since two months.
I don't think that purchase of rails is not interesting for anyone even for
our local distributors.They are lazy to predict only.
Regards
Igor
Just a little thing thing.. The PIC's screwy architecture just so
happens to give a massive advantage in compiler design for executing the
frame based Java Virtual Machine which gives it at least a 5 fold
advantage for Object Orientated Processing over register/load/store
architectures..
I find that difficult to believe. Can you explain this in more detail
without giving away secrets?
It could be Digi-Keys own fault for charging more than Micro-chip, or
they may have purchased these parts in a large volume and are still
making a profit. Digi-Key is a very expensive company to get parts
compared to many other companies I deal with. The only reason I would
ever use digi-key is for unique items that are hard to find anywhere
else and you just seem to have more money than time to deal with it.
So where would be a good place (better than digikey) to buy
approximately 100 PIC12F parts?
My impression of digikey has been that they're a reasonable place to
deal with up until your orders get 'large." For some value of large
that they seem to gradually push upward (IIRC, digikey was initially
wholely a hobbyist supplied. Somewhere I have the "free 555 with
catalog request" that they sent out early in their existance...)
On Mon, 19 May 2003 12:41:19 -0600, Tim Webb wrote:
> It could be Digi-Keys own fault for charging more than Micro-chip, or
> they may have purchased these parts in a large volume and are still
> making a profit. Digi-Key is a very expensive company to get parts
> compared to many other companies I deal with. The only reason I
> would ever use digi-key is for unique items that are hard to find
> anywhere else and you just seem to have more money than time to deal
> with it.
That hasn't been my experience at all. I find Digi-Key very price competitive on small-to-medium quantities of parts. I do a lot of prototyping for my consulting business and buy in the 10-100 qty quite a bit of the time. I also have accounts with most of the "biggie" distributors (Arrow, Avnet etc.). It seems every time I need to place an order I check the web-sites for the "biggies" and their prices are the same or higher than Digi-Key. Also, Digi-Key STOCKS what they have in their catalog (which is getting humongous these days). They always ship when they say they will, have rarely screwed up an order and when they do, they fix it promptly -- usually with next day parts if necessary. Digi-Key's customer support people are top notch too. You always get polite, prompt and courteous service from them. At least that's been my experience over the past 25 years.
Interestingly, many people think Digi-Key is not price competitive on larger quantities. I also have not found that to be the case. Several of my clients have had great experience with their pricing on larger volumes (1000+) and have found them to meet and beat the "biggies" much of the time. Their catalog prices and large volume prices are two
different things.
Digi-Key is one of the few companies I deal with that I think is incredibly well managed. I have no financial ties whatsoever with Digi-
Key, but I find them an indispensable resource as a parts source.
Glad you asked. Healthy sceptism is a trademark of quality engineers. To
give a little backgrounder, I have been building muvium for 3 years
based on software I built for virtual breadboard
(http://www.virtualbreadboard.com) for the 3 years before then so muvium is
about 6 years in the making.. So to speak.. Why is the pic useful for
java..?
Well,.. The banking allows static frames featuring frame caching,
instant context switching, and supurb keyhole optimisations over known
slot locations almost eliminating the stack operators in most cases.
Would be tough to do as efficiently in a load/store architecture..
Ok.. so maybe I did give away a few secrets ;-)
Interesting isn't it. What criples the PIC for C backends like gcc makes
it a champion for java.. Makes sense though.. A weakness in one thing is
often a strength in another. Who would have known that the PIC's
strength would be java..
Muvium executes java in most cases as fast (and sometimes faster) than
equivalent 'C' code and makes the performance of many interpretive java
virtual machines look just a bit silly and yet there are still many more
optimisations and devices to come..
On Tue, 20 May 2003 01:13:25 +0100, James Caska wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Glad you asked. Healthy sceptism is a trademark of quality engineers.
..snip...
I've always thought so too... ;-)
How does it compare to code generated by a C compiler that has a code engine optimized for the PIC architecture like ByteCraft MPC, for instance?
I'd be interested since I use MPC for a lot of my commercial PIC work and it generates code as good or better than I can do in assembler most of the time. MPC isn't a perfect C compiler, but it does generate fast, compact code.
At 03:59 PM 5/19/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>So where would be a good place (better than digikey) to buy
>approximately 100 PIC12F parts?
100 is a pretty tiny quantity. The better prices seem to come from
negotiated deals with the usual large industrial disties. I just bought
a medium quantity of Philips processors and was quoted 25% less than
the "book" price. If you place an order with releases for US$20K+ of
semiconductors you can get good pricing.
But-- shipping charges and such like tend to be larger for those
disties, so a bit of the savings is eaten up. A $15 delivery charge
on a $100 order is 15%.
(IIRC, digikey was initially
>wholely a hobbyist supplied. Somewhere I have the "free 555 with
>catalog request" that they sent out early in their existance...)
Yes, then they went engineer as the hobby market declined. Now the
hobby market is a tiny part of their business.
One must marvel at the chutzpah of a mail order company that chose
to do business from "Thief River Falls". Perhaps it lead their
undeniably excellent customer service. Their web site is also one
of the better ones.
On Mon, 19 May 2003 15:59:59 PDT, William Chops Westfield wrote:
So where would be a good place (better than digikey) to buy
approximately 100 PIC12F parts?
Take a look at the wholesale site of Crownhill, thought with the US$
dropping it may not be as cheap as it once was.
> Digi-Key is one of the few companies I deal with that I think is
> incredibly well managed. I have no financial ties whatsoever with Digi-
> Key, but I find them an indispensable resource as a parts source.
Their web site is also waaaaaay above all the others. It's useful enough
to be an engineering resource, not just a place to order parts.
*****************************************************************
Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts
(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com
At 07:42 AM 5/20/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> > Digi-Key is one of the few companies I deal with that I think is
> > incredibly well managed. I have no financial ties whatsoever with Digi-
> > Key, but I find them an indispensable resource as a parts source.
>
>Their web site is also waaaaaay above all the others. It's useful enough
>to be an engineering resource, not just a place to order parts.
And FAST. It doesn't get into the way, unlike some of their
competitors. No fancy stuff, spinning logos etc. it just does what you
want. I have pointed people looking for an example of a web site that
works. Plus, most of the parts have links to the datasheets.
At the other end of the scale we have hall of shamers such as FAI and
IRF.
Very interesting. I could not imagine to have some advantage of banks and
lack of a stack until I read this. You know, we old, breeded with Intel, and
Z80 machines have a little tough thinking :-)
Well,.. The banking allows static frames featuring frame caching,
instant context switching, and supurb keyhole optimisations over known
slot locations almost eliminating the stack operators in most cases.
Would be tough to do as efficiently in a load/store architecture..
Ahh. Got it. I wouldn't have thought that the granularity of PIC register
banking was fine enough to really help much, especially compared to using
the similar indexed addressing features available on most processors that
let you do similar things with "memory." But I guess the PIC is relatively
unique in that it banks REGISTERS, so the savings depends on whether you
can do enough with PIC registers that you can't do with the competing
architectrue's memory. A pure load/store architecture like an 8051 would
probably lose badly, while something with more registers and more
direct-to/on-memory operations (say, like a real PDP11) would be more
ambiguous in comparison...
There are other benefits too.. Such as natural segmentation for
compartmentalised garbage collection, but the key thing is the ability
to bank hence keeping known location contexts across large sets of
registers. The other architectures are focused on 'relative' ie pointer
access but the PIC's absolute view of the world by chance suits the JVM
concepts when viewed from that perspective. I am working on various
ports to other devices and none of them can keep up with the PIC.. As I
said by a factor of 5 at least which is where this this little
discussion began.
Of more interest to PIC'sters is that the 18F family is about to roll
out the door for muvium so java for the PIC is about to get quite
interesting.
Some of you may have experienced the non availability of the Microchip website over the last few days. This was caused by a unexpected hardware failure that occurred last Sunday that we have since recovered from. We would like to sincerely apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused you in the last few days, and assure you that we are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.
As a courtesy for the inconvenience caused Microchip will waive any shipping charges on any orders placed on its website http://buy.microchip.com for the next 7 days through Friday, June 17, 5 PM Mountain Standard time.
We appreciate your patience over the last few days, and thank you in advance for your continued trust and loyalty.
In addition, we encourage you to use this special discount coupon when ordering development tools. By applying the coupon code JUN17THX into the coupon field during checkout, you will receive a 10% discount on all development tools you order before Friday, June 17th at 5:00 PM. Please note that this coupon is not valid with any other discount other than the free shipping described above.
Steve Sanghi
President & CEO
Microchip Technology Inc
Beware! There is still a problem with the site. I have placed an order
yesterday. It said the transaction of my CC failed by when I checked
with my bank, they said it has been approved!
gme.cz
