10-11-2012, 05:25 PM
A PROJECT REPORT ON AVR MICROCONTROLLER 8515 DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM
Introduction
AVR Microcontrollers
The AVR is a modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single chip microcontroller
which was developed by Atmel in 1996. The AVR was one of the first microcontroller
families to use on-chip flash memory for program storage, as opposed to one-time
programmable ROM, EPROM or EEPROM used by other microcontrollers at the time.
The AVR architecture was conceived by two students at the Norwegian Institute of
Technology (NTH) Alf-Egil Bogen and Vegard Wollan.
The original AVR MCU was developed at a local ASIC house in Trondheim, Norway
called Nordic VLSI at the time, now Nordic Semiconductor, where the two founders of
Atmel Norway were working as students. It was known as a μRISC (Micro RISC) and
was available as silicon IP/building block from Nordic VLSI. When the technology was
sold to Atmel from Nordic VLSI, the internal architecture was further developed by Alf
and Vegard at Atmel Norway, a subsidiary of Atmel founded by the two architects. The
designers worked closely with compiler writers at IAR Systems to ensure that the
instruction set provided for more efficient compilation of high-level languages. Atmel
says that the name AVR is not an acronym and does not stand for anything in particular.
The creators of the AVR give no definitive answer as to what the term "AVR" stands for.
However, it is commonly accepted that AVR stands for “Alf (Egil Bogen) and Vegard
(Wollan)'s Risc processor"