PIC16F88X New General Purpose Microcontroller from Microchip

Microchip announced a new four-member family of 28- microcontrollers. The PIC16F88X family maintains compatibility with the PIC16F87XA family for easy migration. The enhancements include dual internal oscillators with clock switching and fail-safe clock mode; more (up to 14) ADC channels; an advanced comparator module featuring two comparators and a Set/Reset Latch to allow emulation of many analog circuits; and low-power enhancements that extend battery life.

Specific application examples include battery-operated systems and battery management, space-constrained and small form factor applications, analog-intensive applications, and mechatronics.

Additional key features of the PIC16F88X microcontroller family include:

• Up to 14 Kbytes of Self-write Program Flash and low-voltage programming.
• Up to 256 bytes of Data EEPROM
• Onboard In-Circuit Debug module
• Advanced Analog Peripherals
  • Enhanced analog comparator module
  • Up to 14 10-bit ADC channels
  • 0.6V reference voltage for comparators and ADC
• Low Power Features
  • Ultra Low-Power Wake Up
  • Enhanced Low-Current Watchdog Timer
  • Low-Power Timer 1 Oscillator
• Extended Watchdog Timer with low current draw
  • Serial Communication Interfaces
  • UART/SCI connectivity via EUSART module
  • Master Mode SPI and I2C™ with Address Mask option
• Master Synchronous Serial Port (MSSP) with slave address mask
• Enhanced USART (EUSART)
• More General Purpose I/O, with up to 36 pins that can be used for I/O, and Interrupt-on-change capability for each I/O pin

Development Tool Support
Microchip’s development tools, including the PICkit™ 2 Development Programmer (PG164120), $34.99, the free MPLAB® IDE integrated development environment, the MPLAB ICE 2000 emulator, and the low-cost MPLAB ICD 2 in-circuit debugger.

Availability and Pricing
The PIC16F883 and PIC16F884 microcontrollers are expected to be available in December. Pricing for this four-member family starts at $1.58 each in 10,000 unit quantities. The PIC16F883 and PIC16F886 come in 28-pin PDIP, SOIC, SSOP and QFN packages, while the PIC16F884 and PIC16F887 are available in 40-pin PDIP, and 44-pin QFN and TQFP package options.