The first Microchip microcontroller to support the new I3C interface is the PIC18-Q20.

Target device mode features a 12.5 MBit/s maximum speed, a dynamically allocated address, and I2C backward compatibility.

The PIC18-Q20 microcontroller product line was launched by Microchip. These fully functional chips offer multi-voltage I/O, come in 14- and 20-pin packages, and are the first low-pin count microcontrollers with an I3C target mode.

In 1982, the Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) interface made its debut. Today, it is commonly found in a wide variety of peripheral devices and on any microcontroller with a serial port.

The Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit (I3C) standard's initial iteration was released to the market in 2016. Since then, it has made its way into goods like switch products and FPGAs. The first (low-pin count) general-purpose microcontroller on the market with the new interface is Microchip's PIC18-Q20.

I3C is a two-wire (clock and data) multi-drop bus. I2C buses are backward compatible with it. The I3C standard data rate (SDR), which is 12.5 megabit/s, is an improvement above the previous maximum data rate of 1 megabit/s. There are further alternative quicker rates.

The PIC18-Q20 from Microchip only works in I3C target mode and complies with the MIPI I3C Basic Specification 1.0, a subset of the I3C v1.0 specification. This subset is implemented royalty-free and covered by a RAND-Z license. New I3C features including in-band interrupts, dynamic address assignment, and hot-join capabilities are supported by the PIC18-Q20.

The core logic of the PIC18-Q20 may run at a lower voltage than the I3C interface. For instance, the multi-voltage I/O functionality provides I3C operation at voltage levels ranging from 0.95 to 3.63.

The microcontroller series offers common functionality including up to 64 kilobytes of program flash memory, 4 kilobytes of SRAM, 256 bytes of data EEPROM, multi-channel 10-bit ADCs, capacitive touch sensing, and timers in addition to the distinctive characteristics already stated. For a complete datasheet and more information on variations, visit the PIC18-Q20 product page.

Several surface mount packages and the through-hole PDIP type are now available for single chips! An alternative is a Curiosity Nano development board containing a PIC18F16Q20, according to Microchip.