DCD's DRPIC166X low-cost high-performance MCU IP core

Good old-fashioned PIC microcontrollers are finding their way into new applications like smartphones, gaming peripherals, audio devices, and embedded solutions for all sorts of applications such as innovative medical devices.

The DRPIC166X  from Digital Core Design (DCD) is a low-cost high performance 8-bit, fully static soft IP core intended to operate with fast (typically on-chip), dual ported memory. To fulfill modern electronics requirements, this core has been designed with the lowest possible power consumption in mind -- it consumes just 37 uW/MHz when implemented in 0.18u technology.

But power consumption means nothing without reasonable performance. The DRPIC166X features a pipelined Harvard RISC architecture that is 4X faster than the original PIC implementation.

"The PIC family is popular among many engineers due to low cost, wide availability, large user base and extensive collection of application notes," says Jacek Hanke, DCD’s CEO. "That’s why we have not only reduced the power consumption, but also increased the performance; the DRPIC166X offers 1.3 GHz virtual clock frequency in a 0.18u technological process (800 MHz virtual clock frequency in a 0.35u technology)."

The DRPIC166X soft core is software-compatible with industry standard PIC 16XXX microcontrollers. DCD’s IP core implements an enhanced Harvard architecture (separate instruction and data memories) with independent address and data buses.

The 14 bit program memory and 8-bit dual port data memory allow instruction fetch and data operations, to occur simultaneously. "The advantage is that the instruction fetch and memory transfers can be overlapped, by multi stage pipeline, so that the next instruction can be fetched from program memory, while the current instruction is executed with data from the data memory," explains Hanke. "Most instructions are executed within one system clock period, except instructions which directly operate on the program counter (GOTO, CALL, RETURN), in which case the pipeline is cleared and subsequently refilled in an additional clock cycle."


The DRPIC166X Microcontroller fits perfectly in applications ranging from high-speed automotive and appliance motor control, to low-power, remote transmitters/receivers, pointing devices, telecom processors or consumer electronics. Built-in power save mode, makes this IP core perfect for applications, where the power consumption aspect is critical.

The DRPIC166X is delivered with fully automated testbench, complete set of tests and DoCD on-chip hardware debugger,  allowing easy package validation, at each stage of SoC design flow.

Click Here for more information about the DRPIC166X

Click Here for more information about the PIC DoCD

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