The peripheral-rich 8-bit*PIC microcontrollers** offer the best price/performance ratio in the industry, with Flash, one-time-programmable and ROM program memory options. Based on a powerful RISC core, these families feature a common architecture for easy migration from 6 to 100 pins with little or no code change required.
**Microchip’s High Performance Architecture encompasses the PIC18** family of devices. These microcontrollers utilize a 16-bit program word architecture with 18- to 80-pin package options. The PIC18 devices are high performance microcontrollers with integrated A/D converters. All PIC18 microcontrollers incorporate an advanced RISC architecture that supports Flash and OTP devices. The PIC18 has enhanced core features, 32 level-deep stack and multiple internal and external interrupts. The separate instruction and data buses of the Harvard architecture allow a 16-bit instruction word with separate 8-bit data. The two-stage instruction pipeline enables all instructions to execute in a single cycle, except for program branches, which require two cycles. A total of 79 instructions (reduced instruction set) are available.
**The PIC18 family** has special features to reduce external components, thus minimizing cost, enhancing system reliability and reducing power consumption. The PIC18 family builds on the foundation established by the other 8-bit PIC microcontrollers and provides engineers with a smooth, easy migration to these higher levels of performance and feature sets.
