Microchip Technology has introduced a four-member PIC18F4685 family of low-power, 8-bit controller area network (CAN) microcontrollers with 80 KB or 96 KB of flash and integrated EEPROM memory to accommodate the growing complexity of CAN applications. Mitch Obolsky vice president of Microchip's Advanced Microcontroller Architecture Division, said the new MCUs offer the largest amount of program memory available on any PIC18 microcontroller with an onboard ECAN module for CAN connectivity. Family members come in 28-pin and 44-pin package sizes for space-constrained applications.
Obolsky said industry-standard CAN protocols are growing in size, often leaving little code space for the application program. “The PIC18F4685 offers enough code space for both the CAN protocol and advanced applications,” he said, adding that each of the new microcontrollers features Microchip's scalable CAN 2.0B ECAN module, which can switch between standard CAN operations and FIFO mode.
Obolsky said the new devices offer customers a migration path from Microchip's 32 KB and 64 KB CAN families to 80 Kbyte and 96 Kbyte Flash memory.