Announcing the PIC18 family of products with integrated core-independent peripherals.
Equipped with an intelligent ADC with filtering and signal analysis functions

Microchip Technology (North Asia General Manager and Korea Representative: Byung-Don Han) has released a new PIC18F 'K40' microcontroller (MCU) product family.

The family consists of 10 new devices with 16 to 128 KB of flash memory and 28 to 64-pin package options. These cost-optimized 8-bit MCUs are the first in the PIC18 family to offer Microchip's popular Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs).

CIPs offload work from the CPU, allowing developers to perform tasks in hardware while allowing the hardware to handle other tasks or go into standby mode.

This reduces power consumption, provides deterministic response times, and shortens firmware development and verification time. The PIC18F 'K40' features a core-independent intelligent analog-to-digital converter (ADC2) with compute capabilities, controlling data acquisition and signal analysis functions required for sensor interface applications such as capacitive touch detection.

The PIC18F 'K40' with CIPs follows in the footsteps of the successful PIC18F 'K20' family. This cost-effective new device integrates up to 128KB of flash, 5V operation, EEPROM, and a variety of peripherals. The device includes a complete set of core-independent peripherals for safety-critical applications (CRC/memory scan, windowed watchdog timer, hardware limit timer), and provides up to seven hardware PWMs and various communication interfaces.

The PIC18 'K40' family also offers intelligent analog peripherals, including zero-cross detection (ZCD), an on-chip comparator, and an ADC2. The ADC2 handles signal analysis functions such as averaging, filtering, oversampling, and automatic threshold comparison independently of the CPU.

The device is well suited for a wide range of applications and market segments, including touch sensing, industrial control, consumer electronics, automotive, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

“Microchip continues to expand its 8-bit portfolio with new on-chip peripherals for the PIC® and AVR® architectures,” said Steve Drehobl, vice president of Microchip’s 8-bit MCU business unit. “The PIC18F ‘K40’ family combines large memory, core-independent peripherals and Microchip’s MPLAB® Code Configurator (MCC) to significantly reduce development time and improve system performance.”