E-mail for more information Company's other products E-mail to a colleague See similar products Printer friendly format

Microchip Technology offers the PIC24F16KA family of 16-bit microcontrollers with new nanoWatt XLP™ eXtreme Low Power Technology. The PIC24F16KA family features the world's lowest sleep-current consumption microcontrollers, with typical sleep currents as low as 20 nA. Low power, combined with integrated EEPROM memory, and small-footprint and low pin count (20- and 28-pin) package options, makes the four-member PIC24F16KA MCU family appropriate for battery-powered applications, energy-harvesting applications and other power-constrained applications.

Today's portable products need to operate longer with less power and more functionality. Microchip's nanoWatt XLP microcontrollers contain features that are suited for applications such as remote sensors powered by energy harvesting or sealed-battery applications, which can run for more than 20 years from a single battery.

The PIC24F16KA MCUs' 20 nA sleep currents are achieved by isolating power to various circuits during sleep, with a fast wake-up time. The nanoWatt XLP Technology gives designers the flexibility to customize their applications for the lowest power consumption through multiple internal wake-up sources, such as Real-Time Clock and Calendar alarm, Brown-Out Resets, interrupts and Watch-dog Timers, all while maintaining the I/O states.

"Microchip's new nanoWatt XLP families of PIC microcontrollers have surpassed the competition by a substantial margin to offer a new industry benchmark for the lowest sleep current consumption," said Tony Massimini, chief of technology at Semico Research Corporation. "When you factor in the integration of EEPROM, oscillators, USB and capacitive touch sensing peripherals, the potential reduction in system-level power consumption is quite substantial."

Example applications for the new PIC24F16KA microcontrollers include: Medical (home medical devices, oxygen flow meters, lifestyle/fitness monitors); Industrial (energy harvesting/scavenging, utility meters, portable gas sensors, remote sensor networks, asset tracking, sealed/harsh environment sensors); and Consumer (sealed disposable electronics, portable electronics).

"The extremely low sleep current and numerous wake-up features of Microchip's new nanoWatt XLP microcontrollers should be ideal for battery-operated devices, which actually spend most of the time asleep," said Tom Starnes, embedded processor analyst at the semiconductor research firm Objective Analysis. "The interest in the market for such low-power processors, for use in consumer to industrial applications, is really on the rise."

In addition to being ideal for low-power and space-constrained applications, the PIC24F16KA MCU family has high C-code efficiency and computational horsepower, which makes it well suited for applications requiring advanced algorithms.

Owners of the Explorer 16 development board can purchase a $25 PIC24F16KA plug-in module (part # MA240017), for development with this new 16-bit family. All nanoWatt XLP microcontrollers are supported by Microchip's world-class development tools, including the free MPLAB® IDE, the MPLAB REAL ICE™ emulation system, the MPLAB ICD 3 in-circuit debugger, the PICkit™ 3 low-cost debugger/programmer and Microchip's free C compilers. These tools are available today at http://www.microchip.com/XLPTools.


Microchip Technology Inc.
http://www.microchip.com