Video: Vegard Wollan reflects on life and innovation

In the final segment of my interview with AVR microcontroller creator Vegard Wollan, I asked about his background and innovation at Atmel.

In response to my question of how he views his expertise, Vegard noted that he started out as a computer architect and digital designer. It’s simple to see the ease-of-use DNA in the AVR product line when Vegard then noted that he soon saw himself as someone that could make life easy for embedded designers. I think this focus on the customer pervades all of Atmel to this day.

Vegard Wollan reflects on his history of innovation at Atmel.

I went on to ask Vegard what he does in his spare time. His response? Exercising and boating off the beautiful, dramatic Norwegian coastline. I think physical activity is a key thing. In fact, I wish someone had warned me as a young man that engineering has an occupational hazard. You can make a good living sitting at a desk. This was less true when I was an automotive engineer, as I had to go the experimental garage and walk around Ford’s giant complex in Dearborn, Michigan. Nowadays, we all seem chained to a computer, and stuck in a chair all daylong. So, exercise and boating sounds like a great way to stay active and balance our lives a little bit!

As I pictured Vegard sailing around Norway looking at beautiful sunsets, I wondered if that was inspired him to be so innovative. He responded that the primary source of innovation at Atmel is working with a team of creative innovative people. I think this is true in most human endeavors. When I asked my dad why some restaurants had really good service, he noted that good people like to work with other good people. That is why Vegard is spot-on, and quite humble in noting that innovation comes from a team, not any single person.

Want to learn more about the backstory of AVR? You can tune-in to the entire 14-part series here.

Going back to the beginning of AVR with Vegard Wollan

The first episode of this series talked about the very beginning history of the AVR microcontroller chip co-invented by Vegard Wollan. In this clip, we delve into the beauty of Flash memory.

As mentioned in the previous post, engineers used to have to develop their firmware using special ceramic chips with quartz windows.

This early microcontroller has a quartz window in its expensive ceramic package so you can erase the program in an ultraviolet eraser.

Bad enough the chips themselves cost a lot, the real headache was when you had to debug or change your program. You had to pry it out of its socket, and stick it in a ultraviolet eraser for 20 minutes. This really slowed down your code development. It was like playing tennis in molasses.

This UV eraser was used to erase the microcontroller program memory so you could reprogram it with something that you hoped would fix the bugs.

That is what Vegard realized back in the early 1990s: You could make a microcontroller using Flash memory and reprogram in seconds, not hours. Atmel already had a Flash 8051-style micro, so we were a natural to develop the AVR chips.

The aforementioned video touches on the low-power heritage of AVR, which as you already know, Atmel memory products are famous for extremely low power. This advantage was “baked into” the AVR products, since they knew that many applications would run on battery power.

Vegard was also nice enough to bring some early AVR prototypes from his lab in Norway.

Vegard Wollan holds one of the first 10 AVR prototype chips, the S1200.

When Vegard holds up the various prototype chips, you can see the pride of an innovator on his face. I think every engineer gets a real charge out of that first prototype, as even I have a collection of my own at home.

In case you missed our earlier segment on the history of AVR, you can check that out here. Feeling inspired to create and share your own 8-bit ideas? Enter them in our Simply AVR Design Contest today for your chance at $1,500!