Atmel's line of 8-bit AVR MCUs has been made extremely popular thanks to Arduino, but for those who want to explore the possibilities of AVR in-depth, mikroLab for AVR provides greater possibilities. This kit contains an EasyAVR v7 board that supports a total of 64 AT, ATmega, and ATtiny MCUs, a mikroC for AVR compiler license, and a free copy of VisualGLCD.
The AVR was invented by two Norwegian students, Alf-Egil Bogen and Vegard Wollan. Their intention was to create an architecture that could efficiently execute programs written in C. Atmel acquired the IP and hired the students, introducing first AVR MCUs in 1997 with great success. By 2003, they had already shipped 500 million units. Today the architechture is well known and widespread. Every available AVR chip in DIP packaging can fit onto the EasyAVR v7, with sockets for 8, 14, 20, 28, and 40 pins available on the board.