AVR Microcontrollers Now Supported in MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment

Designers who have traditionally used Microchip’s PIC microcontrollers (MCUs) and developed with the MPLAB ecosystem can now easily evaluate and incorporate AVR MCUs - the family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel and acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016 - into their applications. The majority of AVR MCUs are now beta supported with the release of MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE) version 5.05, available now from Microchip.

Microchip just announced its new SAM D5x and E5x MCUs that provide powerful performance and enhanced security features, combining the performance of an ARM Cortex-M4 processor with a Floating Point Unit (FPU). The SAM D5x and SAM E5x 32-bit MCU families offer extensive connectivity interfaces, powerful performance and robust hardware-based security for a wide variety of applications.

Microchip's latest PIC MCU family brings ease of design with more Core Independent Peripherals and is first to offer a 48-pin package with additional ADC channels and I/Os. The new PIC16F15386 family with CIPs uses MPLAB Code Configurator for quick development and offers Memory Access Partition with write-protection to prevent accidental over-write. A Device Information Area protects unique device identification and calibration values.

Microchip Technology released a new generation of 8-bit tinyAVR MCUs. The four new devices range from 14 to 24 pins and 4 KB to 8 KB of Flash and are the first tinyAVR microcontrollers to feature Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs). The new devices will be supported by Atmel START, an innovative online tool for intuitive, graphical configuration of embedded software projects.