This family of devices is designed for high-volume applications such as industrial control, building automation, consumer equipment, power tools, and sensor-based systems. Part of the company's unified microcontroller strategy, the PL10 devices are pin-compatible with AVR® microcontrollers.
The Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC) and its integrated 12-bit A/D converter are designed for fast response in touch applications and are characterized by their high noise immunity for measuring analog signals. Other integrated circuits (CIPs) on the chip help offload time-critical, repetitive, and deterministic tasks from the CPU, thereby improving real-time performance and reducing power consumption.
The PL10 microcontrollers are compliant with the Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS), enabling modular and reusable application code to accelerate development. In addition to support from Microchip's MPLAB® development ecosystem, the PL10 family is compatible with a wide range of tools and integrated development environments (IDEs), giving developers greater freedom in how they build, debug, and deploy their software. Supported third-party tools include Microsoft® Visual Studio Code® (VS Code®), IAR™ Systems, Arm Keil®, SEGGER, Zephyr®, and MikroElektronika. AI-based resources such as MPLAB AI Coding Assistant provide context-aware code generation and real-time product insights to further accelerate and simplify development.
“PL10 microcontrollers help engineers more easily migrate to higher-performance microcontrollers while retaining the development expertise, power efficiency, and cost structure of our 8-bit solutions,” said Greg Robinson, corporate vice president of Microchip’s microcontroller business unit. “We are preparing to launch a number of new microcontrollers over the next 12–18 months, ranging from entry-level devices to AI devices. This reinforces Microchip’s commitment to offering a comprehensive portfolio of microcontrollers designed to meet evolving market demands.
The PL10 family is designed to meet various safety standards, such as ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 26262 for functional safety in vehicle electrical and electronic systems. Furthermore, these microcontrollers, designed to operate between 1.8 and 5.5 V, are suitable for noisy environments such as automotive, IoT, industrial automation, and consumer electronics. The PL10 microcontrollers allow simultaneous connection to devices operating at different voltage levels without external level converters through the integration of MVIO (Multi-Voltage I/O).
