Marcio,

there are often restricted versions of a software / hardware for a much lower price available than the full-featured version. I assume that Segger and Atmel have an agreement that the price for the SAM-ICE is much lower than that of the full-featured, fully flexible J-Link. This is to the benefit of both companies, Atmel because their customers are limited to Atmel products for debugging, as your example shows and Segger because customers working with multiple architectures need either a regular J-Link or multiple ones.

I disagree with you, they are not the same product although they are based on the same hardware. A product is the combination of hardware and software and obviously there is a difference.

An example from my professional life; I worked with a major automotive supplier and they used a powerful MCU for powertrain management. Once I asked out of curiosity what it takes to have cruise control in a car or not, the developer told me, it takes a software switch during compile time, that's it. The automobile vendor however charges $300 or sometimes more for cruise control. There are many such features enabled by software that make a big difference in price. Another example in a TV, picture in picture feature is a software switch and might cost you 100-200 Dollars and so on.
If you buy a J-Link without limitations, you pay more for it, if you buy the restricted version, you get a good deal for one architecture but can't use ot for something else.

I know this does not help you right now but may be you understand why there are differences in pricing between restricted and non-restricted versions.

Bob

In fact the SAM-ICE is cheaper than a J-Link because it is limited to SAM microcontrollers.
If you can get a compiler with 64k code limitation and you don't need more than 64k this is perfect for you.
If you need more than 64k you will need to buy the full featured version of the compiler.

The same goes for the SAM-ICE and J-Link.


Greets,
Xcelsior

Hi Marcio.

$6k is in deed a lot of money and I am sure it was not for the price of the J-Link which is just 249 Euros stand alone. In my former company, we bought a IAR ARM7 Starter kit for $299 including the yellow J-Link. I was told, the yellow J-Link works with multiple ARMs from different vendors (did not ask for the SAMSUNG though)

Bob