 The AVR architecture was conceived by two students at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH), Alf-Egil Bogen and Vegard Wollan.The original AVR MCU was developed at a local ASIC house in Trondheim, Norway, called Nordic VLSI at the time, now Nordic Semiconductor, where Bogen and Wollan were working as students.It was known as a μRISC (Micro RISC) and was available as silicon IP/building block from Nordic VLSI.