To help automotive designers meet the rising need of increased bandwidth and flexible data, Microchip Technology has come up with the PIC18-Q84 family of 8-bit MCUs designed for automotive interface and smart sensor networks. Accompanied by an extensive array of Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs) that handle a variety of tasks without requiring CPU intervention, these MCUs have the ability to cut time and cost when connecting systems to a CAN FD network.
This device family ranges from 28-48 pins and is available in different space-saving packages. The cost-optimized PIC18-Q84 MCUs provides a simple solution for transporting sensor data to a CAN FD bus, without the need for gateways or sophisticated network switching techniques. Moreover, the configurable CIPs make it easy for the designers to create custom hardware-based functions for automotive and industrial designs with near-zero latency without any additional code.
While saving both time and cost when connecting systems to a CAN FD network, this product family offers up to 128 KB self-programmable zip flash memory, Up to 13 KB data SRAM and 1K Data EEPROM, system clock speed up to 64 MHz clock input across 1.8 to 5.5 V operating voltage range in temperature from -40 to 125 degree Celsius. Also, for power saving, the device can operate in standby, idle, and power-down sleep modes to balance performance with power consumption.
Available peripherals include a 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy Check with Scan (CRC/SCAN) and a Windowed Watchdog Timer (WWDT) for functional safety capabilities and a Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) interface to implement industry-standard testing and debugging.
The PIC18 Q84 family offers both hardware and software support. Hardware includes a Curiosity Nano Development Board and a Curiosity High Pin Count (HPC) Development Board. A plug-in module (PIM) is also available for the Automotive Networking Development Board and use with Microchip development boards. The software includes Microchip’s MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC). The PIC18 Q84 family is available in volume production starting at $0.78 in 10,000-unit quantities.
