Microchip Technology announces complete portfolio of 8-, 16- and 32-bit USB microcontrollers

Microchip Technology has announced the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of 8-, 16- and 32-bit USB microcontrollers (MCUs) supported by a single integrated development environment - the free MPLAB IDE. Building on its rich 8-bit USB PIC MCU offerings, Microchip now offers the low-power 16-bit PIC24F USB family, which is pin, peripheral and software compatible with the new high-performance, 80 MHz, 32-bit PIC32 USB MCUs. In addition, Microchip expands its 8-bit USB product offering at the low end with the lower-cost, smaller-footprint PIC18F1XK50 family. The entire USB PIC microcontroller line is supported with free USB software stacks and USB class drivers.

The widespread adoption of USB in the personal-computing market has spawned a large development infrastructure and user base. For this reason, embedded designers are rapidly embracing USB as the external connectivity interface of choice in the consumer and industrial markets. Replacing older communications interfaces - such as RS232 - with USB allows engineers to add new functionality to their products while keeping design and manufacturing costs low. Unlike the PC market, embedded applications demand versatility from the interface. Simpler embedded systems may only be required to perform a peripheral role, while others can be called upon to act as USB hosts, or support both roles at various instances. The breadth of Microchip's MCU portfolio gives designers the option to select the appropriate device for their USB application task.

The PIC18F13K50 and PIC18F14K50 (PIC18F1XK50) are the lowest-cost USB MCUs from Microchip, and build on a broad family of existing USB PIC
microcontrollers. They provide a host of features not normally found on inexpensive 8-bit MCUs - enabling the addition of embedded USB into a wide range of applications. The PIC18F1XK50 MCUs include a variety of serial communications interfaces, such as USB 2.0, I2C, SPI and USART; enabling them to transfer data between USB and other embedded serial networks.

Microchip Technology