Does anyone know how fast you can push a chip in the atmega line? Say atmega168 for example? From documentation I have read it puts the limit at about 16-20mhz, but similar pic chips can do up to 40?
If I hooked up an atmega with a 32-40 mhz crystal what would happen? Does anyone know? Would it work, fail to start, catch on fire?
Just curious here, im looking for a little more speed but I dont really want to switch to pic’s =)
Most PICs divide the oscillator by four to derive the clock, so a 40 MHz PIC has a 10 MHz clock (10 MIPS). A 16-bit dsPIC or PIC24 will give up to 40 MIPS.
Leon
Yeah as Leon says (in a technical way) AVRs take less cycles to do instruction than PICs do, so a 40MHz PIC is roughly eqivalent to a 20MHz AVR.
As for how far can you overclock an AVR like a mega168 - interesting question. I’m sure I saw a project somewhere that was running one at 25MHz, but can’t find it right this second.
Why not give it a go though! It’d definately be interesting. I’m sure it wouldn’t catch fire, and you’d only be out the ~$4 if it did do permanent damage to the chip.
Pretty sure you’d get a write up on Make: blog and hack-a-day for your efforts!
A 40 MHz PIC is actually equivalent to a 10 MHz AVR, in terms of instruction cycles.
Leon