the 328 will be out in 2008, probably feb/march. i expect that arduino will support this chip. P just means DIP part Er, looks like it means something else, maybe some core revision. probably not a big deal.
I hate that about the chips. There is no way to easily compare them.
You have to dive in to the datasheet for each and compare individual figures until you find whats different.
I should note that the Arduino core firmware is not currently set up to utilize even the more primitive power saving modes available on the current AVR cpus, so the "picopower" aspects are not likely to be so interesting as the doubling of flash, ram, and eeprom...
None of the 28-pin picopower AVRs are showing up at (digikey, mouser, etc) and the atmel page says "by the end of 2007", so I suspect Limor's "sometime in 2008" is a good estimate, unless you're a major player...
I hate that about the chips. There is no way to easily compare them.
You have to dive in to the datasheet for each and compare individual figures until you find whats different.
I had to talk to an Atmel Sales rep anyway, who confirmed the Atmega328 is expected in production quantities for 2008 Q3 (so only a little later than LadyAda's ball-parking).
It took us about 5 hours to modify and test a code move from the Atmega168 to Atmega328P for another project; 4.5 hours of that was testing. We really just chose the '328 in AVRStudio, make'd, and I think we had to change one memory constant.
If you're not using the picopower bits (which the Arduino isn't), it's really just a 168 with more flash, ram, and eeprom.
I expect the Arduino code would require a modified bootloader (IIRC the bootloader address moved to the new top of ram location) and a new chip definition to use all the extra memory.
Testing the 328 with Arduino is on my todo list, it's just not at the top yet :-/
I thought the other picopower atmels in this series (48p,88p,168p) could only run at 10mhz - can this one run at 20? or were you thinking of the using the mods (I think they were added for the lilypad?) that allows for slower clock?
The pico-power chips come in both 10 and 20 variants (see ATMEGA168P-20PU and ATMEGA168PV-10PU).
Someone else could likely comment better, but my literature shows the Pico-power enhancements are primarily more/better sleep modes, so having both speed/voltage ranges still make sense.
@Ladyada: What did you change in the bootloader code (youtalked about "porting"). Is there anyway you could share this code so I/someone else could burn my own atmega328? I'm running out of program memory fast here.
Does anyone know where we can get these ATmega328P chip from and ladaya can you please post the bootloader somewhere so we can test that out.
I see mouser has got them but their on order Mfr. Part #ATMEGA328P-PU would be really great if someone can point me to a place that has them in stock, and where to download the bootloader and instructions to put that on it.