PIC and AVR - A comparative study
This is a long debate along electronics hobbyists as marvel vs dc among comic book fans. I worked along with the two for some time and would like to add in my experiences.
All the features below are based on the experiences of a Kerala based hobbyist..At a national/ international level, they may vary. This is not a final word on the subject.
Pricing
PICs is less costly than AVR in India. It seems that PIC wins in this respect.
Availability of a variety of chips.
In India, its difficult to speak about ATTiny or AT90S series to shopkeepers because people are more familiar with Atmega, AT89C, AT89S etc..Actually this comes out of the academic circles where the 8051 variants are taught most. Even then, the ARM architecture microcontrollers of AVR is catching the market fast. On the other hand, PIC has a wider penetration in the market with almost all types of chips like 12F,16F,18F,disPIC etc...PIC's the winner.
See the two pictures on bottom to view the diff in availabilty and price for AVR and chip. Its taken from a website which offers very low prices for chips
IDE/ compilers
AVR uses the avr-gcc toolchain and the Atmel studio 6 IDE is astonishingly good at zero cost. You can download and start working without any hassles. In case of PIC we have MPLAB IDE. If you are into serious level programming, then you are flooded with a lot of compilers that needs to be paid to get the full functionality. Compiler mismatch is also a serious problem here. Assembly is free in PIC and AVR but in overall, AVR seems to be the leader.
Simulation/Debuggers
Simulation wise, I liked the PIC MPLAB IDE. Third part simulation softwares are also available for the both families. In in circuit debugging, both have their JTAG and ICD in circuit debuggers though I haven't worked with them.
Peripheral Features
This is a tie since both of them have a decent amount of peripherals like timers, USART,SPI, I2C, USB, CAN etc. In case of chips with dedicated features like USB, Ethernet, CAN I like PIC more than AVR. Actually that's because of the availability factor too.
Support
PIC datasheets are little bit confusing for me than AVR. Both boast of a wide support in websites like AVR Freaks etc..The companies also market a lot of boards like STK, Dragon etc..This also results in a tie.
Programming/ Flashing
This section stands in AVR's favour. A lot of programmers are available for ICSP programming in open source. While PIC too has a programmer and open source designs, avr is relatively easy to construct and has less restrictions on the target whereas with PIC, some programmers doesn't support every chips. PIC has a lot of unwanted restrictions depending on chips. Its easy to construct a USBAsp than a PICKit clone when the ic prices are compared. I suffered a lot with programming PICs than AVR.
User friendliness
AVR programming seems to be easy for a beginner with the low cost setup. An arduino board also seems to help in this regard. PIC needs to go a little more in this regard.
