•  
• EDN Europe MAGAZINE
•  
• Free SUBSCRIPTION
• Subscription Renewal
• View Media Kit

• EDN
• EDN Australia
• EDN Asia
• EDN China
• EDN Japan

Microchip extends PIC microcontrollers to 32-bit

Engineers working with Microchip Technology’s PIC architecture microcontrollers now have a 32-bit PIC to use in their designs. Microchip has employed the MIPS 4K processor core, adding to it an upgraded peripheral set that it derived from its 16-bit PIC24 family. At introduction, there will be seven parts running up to 72 MHz with a 1.5 DMIPS/MHz rating; in 64- and 100-pin packages, they will carry up to 512 kbytes of flash memory and up to 32 kbytes of RAM. Microchip has structured the new product line to maintain the PIC family “look and feel” as far as possible; the 32-bit devices will be supported in the company’s MPLab development environment, and the 64- and 100-pin packages will be pin-compatible with their 16-bit equivalents.

Paul Garden, of MIPS’ high performance MCU division, says that the company chose to use an IP core rather than extend its own architecture because of the time saved— he estimates two years—in designing the core and establishing the “ecosystem” of third-party software partners and tool vendors that is already in place for the MIPS core. He says that the company selected the MIPS core over—for example—ARM’s Cortex M3 for a variety of reasons, including the deeper pipeline (5- vs 3-stage), better power effi ciency, and extensibility; the MIPS core features a co-processor interface to add hardware acceleration, plus the possibility to extend the instruction set. However, Garden says, the IP in the peripheral set is Microchip’s own, developed from its 16-bit chips.

A new C32 C compiler and the company’s Real ICE emulation system and ICD 2 in-circuit debugger support PIC32. At launch, it comes with a long list of third-party tool and operating- system providers, as well as graphics-display-tool suppliers. On-chip debug features support Microchip’s own twowire debug interface or the JTAG interface with hardware breakpoints and combinational triggering. There is also on-chip instruction tracing that is transparent to core operation and that employs fi ve multiplexed pins, which you can re-assign after debug is complete. You can begin exploration of the products with a $49.95 starter kit that includes a USB-powered board; or, if you already have Microchip’s Explorer 16 development board, you can buy a $25 plug-in module to mount PIC32.

This announcement followed one from MIPS, in which the company notifi ed its intention to provide its IP cores in versions optimised for microcontrollers; according to MIPS’ vice president of marketing, Jack Browne, “We are enabling the fabless model for MCUs by offering a complete solution of digital I/O and cores, analogue I/O, debug and development tools, and superior ecosystem support for RTOS. New market drivers and MIPS’ broad system offering make it a perfect time for us to enter the 32-bit market to help designers meet the requirements of next-generation MCUs.” MIPS will offer cores ranging from its MIPS 4K to 24K offerings and supplement these with a range of analogue peripheral functions that it added to its own resources with its recent acquisition of Portuguese IP vendor ChipIdea.

Microchip, www.microchip.com.
MIPS, www.mips.com.