July 15, 2024 /SemiMedia/ -- Microchip Technology announced that it has expanded its processor product range with the PIC64 portfolio to meet the growing needs of today's embedded designs. The PIC64 family enables Microchip to become a single-vendor solution provider for MPUs designed to support a wide range of markets that require real-time and application-level processing. The PIC64GX MPU is the first product released in the new product family, enabling intelligent edge designs for industrial, automotive, communications, IoT, aerospace and defense.

“Microchip is a leader in 8- 16- and 32-bit embedded solutions and, as the market evolves, so must our product lines. The addition of our 64-bit MPU portfolio allows us to offer low-, mid- and high-range compute processing solutions,” said Ganesh Moorthy, CEO and President of Microchip Technology. “The PIC64GX MPU is the first of several 64-bit MPUs designed to support the intelligent edge and address a broad range of performance requirements across all market segments.”

The intelligent edge often requires 64-bit heterogenous compute solutions with asymmetric processing to run Linux®, real-time operating systems and bare metal in a single processor cluster with secure boot capabilities. Microchip’s PIC64GX family manages mid-range intelligent edge compute requirements using a 64-bit RISC-V® quad-core processor with Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) and deterministic latencies. The PIC64GX MPU is the first RISC-V multi-core solution that is AMP capable for mixed-criticality systems. It is designed with a quad-core, Linux-capable Central Processing Unit (CPU) cluster, fifth microcontroller class monitor and 2 MB flexible L2 Cache running at 625 MHz.

The PIC64GX family boasts pin compatibility with Microchip’s PolarFire® SoC FPGA devices, offering a large amount of flexibility in the development of embedded solutions. Additionally, the 64-bit portfolio will leverage Microchip’s easy-to-use ecosystem of tools and supporting software, including a host of powerful processes to help configure, develop, debug and qualify embedded designs.

The PIC64 High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (PIC64-HPSC) family is also being launched as part of Microchip’s first wave of 64-bit offerings. The space-grade, 64-bit multi-core RISC-V MPUs are designed to increase compute performance by more than 100 times while delivering unprecedented radiation and fault tolerance for aerospace and defense applications. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA-JPL) announced in August 2022 that it had selected Microchip to develop an HPSC processor as part of its ongoing commercial partnership efforts. The PIC64-HPSC family represents a new era of autonomous space computing for NASA-JPL and the broader defense and commercial aerospace industry.

With the introduction of its PIC64 portfolio, Microchip has become the only embedded solutions provider actively developing a full spectrum of 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and microprocessors (MPUs). Future PIC64 families will include devices based on RISC-V or Arm® architectures and embedded designers will be able to take advantage of Microchip’s end-to-end solutions—from silicon to embedded ecosystems—for faster design, debug and verification and a reduced time to market.

For more information, please visit https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microprocessors/64-bit-mpus.