Digital Signal Controllers with 16-bit Audio DAC

These new devices feature Direct Memory Access (DMA) with 2 Kbytes of dual-port RAM included in total of 16 Kbytes of RAM. They are offered with 64 or 128 Kbytes of Flash memory, which can store instructions or data. Microchip’s DSCs all feature full DSP capability for applications that process, compress or decompress audio data. Most MCU instructions and all DSP instructions execute in a single cycle.



Microchip offers optimised software libraries, so designers can add DSP-enabled features without extensive DSP development. Several industry-standard speech-compression libraries can be downloaded for evaluation and development at no charge, and can be licensed for free or at a low cost for production, depending on the library. These speech libraries include G.711 (64 kbps), ADPCM G.726A (16-40 kbps) and SPEEX (8 kbps).



The new dsPIC DSCs feature a range of peripherals including two analogue comparators, a user-selectable 10- or 12-bit ADC, and a real-time clock calendar. Serial peripherals include 2 UARTs, 2 SPIs, I2C™ and CAN2.0B. Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) hardware is also included. A Parallel Master/Slave Port (PMP) enables parallel connection to external memory, communication peripherals or displays. The devices also include the highly flexible Peripheral Pin Select (PPS), allowing digital peripherals to be remapped to various pins to achieve layout efficiency or access pin-multiplexed peripherals. All devices are offered in Industrial (-40° to +85°C) and Extended (-40° to +125°C) temperature ranges.



Four of the new dsPIC33 devices also offer a CODEC interface supporting the I2S and AC’97 protocols, while two also offer motor control and power conversion peripherals, including a 3-phase PWM, a power factor correction PWM and two quadrature encoder interfaces.



Volume production is expected during the second quarter of 2008. These dsPIC33 families are supported by the free MPLAB® IDE, the MPLAB C30 C compiler, the MPLAB ICD 2 for programming and debugging, and the MPLAB PM3 universal device programmer. Microchip has also created the Explorer 16 development board (part number DM240001) in support of all its 3.3V 16- and 32-bit controllers. There is also a low cost 28-pin starter development board (part number DM300027) for all 28-pin 16-bit devices.



The 28-pin devices are available in SOIC, QFN and SPDIP packages, while the 44-pin devices are offered in TQFP and QFN packages.