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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T16:26:05+00:00

I have used and like the Atmel ATMEGA and ATTINY series microcontrollers, and think

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I have used and like the Atmel ATMEGA and ATTINY series microcontrollers, and think them quite good. One thing I am not terribly fond of though is the fact that they (and Microchip PIC uC family also) are all Harvard machines, meaning I can’t really put external memory to use or execute out of RAM, only the flash.

While there are obvious advantages to this design, it makes it technically very difficult to do things like FORTH using an AVR or PIC. (I know there is at least one implementation, but it does not work like a normal FORTH and will wear out the flash rather rapidly)

FORTH was originally created for interactive machine control type systems where lots of flexibility was needed, so things like the Z80 or 6809 were used as microcontrollers with the control program executing out or RAM or some other storage device.

Does anyone know of current devices of similar complexity (preferably available in DIP packages) to the AVR/PIC that are von Neumman machines?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Farnell has a nice search function that let’s you search for microcontrollers in DIP packages. Though you’ll have figure out which families are non-Harvard by looking at the data sheets.

    Take a look at the 68K ones and the HCS08.

    Update: In the meantime some ARM Cortex-M controllers in DIP packages have become available, the LPC810M021FN8 and the LPC1114FN28 from NXP.

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