3

The PIC Microcontroller

3.1 THE PIC MICROCONTROLLER FAMILY

The PIC microcontroller is a family of microcontrollers manufactured by the Microchip Technology Inc. Currently the PIC is one of the most popular microcontrollers used in education, and in commercial and industrial applications. The family consists of over 140 devices, ranging from simple 4-pin dual in-line devices with 0.5 K memory, to 80-pin complex devices with 32 K memory.

Even though the family consists of a large number of devices, all the devices have the same basic structure, offering the following fundamental features:

  • reduced instruction set (RISC) with only 35 instructions;
  • bidirectional digital I/O ports;
  • RAM data memory;
  • rewritable flash, or one-time programmable program memory;
  • on-chip timer with pre-scaler;
  • watchdog timer;
  • power-on reset;
  • external crystal operation;
  • 25 mA current source/sink capability;
  • power-saving sleep mode.

More complex devices offer the following additional features:

  • analog input channels;
  • analog comparators;
  • serial USART;
  • nonvolatile EEPROM memory;
  • additional on-chip timers;
  • external and internal (timer) interrupts;
  • PWM output;
  • CAN bus interface;
  • I2Cbus interface;
  • USB interface;
  • LCD interface.

The PIC microcontroller product family currently consists of six groups:

  • PIC10FXXX 12-bit program word;
  • PIC12CXXX/PIC12FXXX 12/14-bit program memory;
  • PIC16C5X 12-bit program word;
  • PIC16CXXX/PIC16FXXX 14-bit program word;
  • PIC17CXXX 16-bit program word;
  • PIC18CXXX/PIC18FXXX 16-bit program ...

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