Arduino Uno R3 Questions

[UNISOL]

Hi everyone. Recently I get my hand on a Arduino Uno R3 and I have a few questions to ask. I'm also new to Arduino so if anything is not right, pls correct me.

1.Can Arduino Uno R3 support a lesser pin micro controller chip or only can support Atmel ATmega328 only?
2.Is there any lesser pin micro controller chip provide by Atmel?
3.Is there other chip brand like Atmel that Arduino can support?

Thanks.

[ober]

1.Can Arduino Uno R3 support a lesser pin micro controller chip or only can support Atmel ATmega328 only?
2.Is there any lesser pin micro controller chip provide by Atmel?
3.Is there other chip brand like Atmel that Arduino can support?

1. Nop, the board is designed to support 28-pin Atmega, besides 328 you can try Atmega168. Arduino community choose 328 because of the program memory and ram size, compared to 168; 328 have more memory. Pins are same.
2. Yes, sure, Attiny8 (I think is correct), but I am not familiar with Atmel microcontroller, might need to search their site.
3. For the time being, Arduino community only support Atmel chip. Other open source community also have similar platform such as ChipKit, Pinguino, etc. Check it out from Google