Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The small packages -- down to 6×6 mm -- Microchip Technology uses for its newest PIC24F 16-bit microcontroller family do not compromise memory or I/O capabilities. The chips, available in 28- and 44-pin QFN packages, include 16 Kbytes to 64 Kbytes of flash program memory and as many as 8 Kbytes of SRAM. The PIC24FJ64GA004 family lets developers use a pin-mapping function to connect I/O devices to specific MCU pins as needed. And, the family offers a set of peripherals similar to those in the 100-pin PIC24FJ128GA family. Applications for this new family of small-yet-capable MCUs include security systems, audio equipment, steering systems, medical instruments and so on. Development tools include the free MPLAB IDE which helps designers map I/O pins and initialize code for the on-chip peripherals. Microchip offers the full-featured MPLAB REAL ICE<tm> tool and the low-cost MPLAB ICD 2 tool for emulation and debugging. All eight members of the PIC24FJ64GA004 family are available now and prices start at $1.69 (10,000).
Microchip Technology
480-792-7200, www.microchip.com