This powerful 6.25 MIPS (160 nanosecond instruction execution) yet easy-to-program (only 77 single word instructions) CMOS-based ROMless 8-bit microcontroller packs Microchip's powerful PIC® architecture into an 64- or 68-pin package and is upwards compatible with the PIC16C5X, PIC12CXXX, PIC16CXX and PIC17CXX devices and thus providing a seamless migration path of software code to higher levels of hardware integration while offering the customer the flexibility to add external FLASH or EPROM program memory. This allows the customer to expand and fit the program/data memory to their specific application. The PIC18C601 features a 'C' compiler friendly development environment, External Memory Addressing to 256K Bytes, 2 capture/compare/PWM functions, 8 channels of 10-bit Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converter, the synchronous serial port can be configured as either 3-wire Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI™) or the 2-wire Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C™) bus and Addressable Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (AUSART). All of these features make it ideal for manufacturing equipment, instrumentation and monitoring, data acquisition, power conditioning, environmental monitoring, telecom and consumer audio/video applications.