I noticed the PIC's offered by a few of the suppliers is declining. Atmel, Phillips, Freescale and group of newer chips are being offered. Considering price, PIC's seem to have the rest beat. What is the trend about? A year ago a company I was working with dropped the PIC's and redesigned with the Atmel base. The reason for the switch was "better architecture" and not cost. The engineering group were firm believers in open source and didn't have much regard for MS systems. This seems a common dividing line. I just flow with it.