chipKIT™ Development Platforms from Microchip and Digilent Bring MIPS Performance to the Arduino™ Community
By Marc McComb, Academic Program Sales Engineer, Microchip Technology
Introduction
| On May 23 2011, Microchip Technology and Digilent Inc. announced the release of two new development boards-the chipKIT™ Uno32™ and chipKIT Max32™ boards. Both of these boards feature Microchip's PIC32 devices that utilize the MIPS32® M4K® core. These two platforms have been specifically developed to introduce 32-bit functionality to a hobbyist/academic community that has exploded over the latter part of the decade, centered around an open-source prototyping platform called the Arduino™ platform. This article provides an overview of this "Arduino movement" and explains how the chipKIT platforms build upon existing solutions. To understand the chipKIT solution, we must first talk about Arduino. |  |
What's Arduino™?
The Arduino project began in Ivrea, Italy back in 2005 by founders Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles. The fundamental concept was to create a package that consisted of a simple-to-use programming language in conjunction with very basic hardware, based upon another prototyping platform called Wiring. Moreover, the philosophy of the project was to ensure that both hardware and software source files would remain open-source and easily accessible by the general public. These would include a compiler, libraries and bootloader firmware on the software side, and schematic and other CAD files on the hardware side.
Using a very high-level programming language founded in C++, users are able to provide simple commands to develop hardware applications without ever needing to open a datasheet or even know how a microcontroller actually works. User applications developed within the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) are then downloaded to the selected hardware through a simple bootloader application. This platform does not have debug capabilities, so this is essentially a "burn-and-learn" environment.
 | Each of the Arduino hardware platforms features a common footprint for expansion headers that are intended to allow connectivity with a large number of expansion daughter cards called "shields." The shields have been developed by both the original Arduino team and the community. These shields provide users with the ability to explore different technologies from a common and familiar environment such as motor control, advanced communications such as Ethernet, Wireless connectivity, and many more.
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The Arduino solution quickly became popular with students, hobbyists and even artists. Sales of the Arduino platform continue to grow, with a reported 120,000 boards shipped as of February 2010[1]. This has prompted a number of significant distributors, including Farnell, to create Arduino-specific homepages on their Web sites, to meet the increasing demand for these products. Along with the success of the hardware and software, an enormous repository of user-submitted/maintained resources, including reference materials, code examples, curriculum and much more, can be found at www.arduino.cc.
The chipKIT™ Platform
Since its inception, the Arduino platform and all of its various hardware boards have been based on 8-bit Atmel microcontrollers. However, with the recent release of the chipKIT platform, existing users can now take advantage of the power that a 32-bit MIPS-based microcontroller provides. Microchip enlisted the talents of experienced Arduino IDE developers Mark Sproul and Rick Anderson from the Fair Use Building and Research Labs (http://fubarlabs.org/) in Central New Jersey. Mark and Rick spent many months porting software source files and modifying the existing bootloader within the Arduino IDE so that existing code could be downloaded with no modification onto the PIC32 microcontrollers populating the boards. In this way, chipKIT platform users are able to fully leverage the vast repository of code examples, reference materials and other resources that were discussed earlier in this article.
 | The chipKIT hardware was completely designed and manufactured by Digilent Inc. (Pullman, WA), a Microchip Authorized Design Partner for many years, to be hardware-compatible with the existing Arduino boards. Therefore, existing 3.3V Arduino shields and applications can likely be used with little or no modification. |
Unprecedented Features
Populated with Microchip Technology's 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers, each chipKIT board brings unprecedented performance, memory expansion and peripheral features to the Arduino community for the very first time. Additionally, these advanced features are provided at a significant cost reduction in comparison to existing solutions (see tables 1 and 2).
Table 1: Comparison of chipKIT™ Uno 32™ to Exisiting Arduino™ UNO Board (prices shown in USD)
Table 2: Comparison of chipKIT™Max 32™ Board to Existing Arduino™ Mega2560 Board (prices shown in USD)
The chipKIT Max32 board features advanced connectivity peripherals, including Ethernet, CAN, and USB (Full-Speed Host, Device and OTG). Both the Max32 and Uno32 boards have multiple timers, a 16-channel 1 MSPS Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC), two comparators, and multiple I2C™, SPI, and UART interfaces. Microchip's PIC32 microcontroller is also the highest performance 32-bit microcontroller in its class, featuring the industry-leading MIPS32 M4K core and delivering four times the performance of existing Arduino solutions.
Summary
A tremendous software and hardware engineering effort has been invested to ensure maximum compatibility between the chipKIT platform and existing Arduino shields, applications and courseware. The Arduino programming environment has been modified and extended so that it supports the PIC32-based chipKIT boards, as well as traditional Arduino boards. The Arduino standard libraries have been also been modified to support chipKIT boards and traditional Arduino boards. All of this work has been contributed back to the open-source Arduino community.
Students, educators and hobbyists, with or without electronic-engineering backgrounds, are always looking for inexpensive solutions that will enable them to easily integrate electronics into their projects. The chipKIT development platform meet these needs by adhering to the simple to use, open-source philosophy of the Arduino community, providing far more performance and functionality than any other Arduino solution, at a lower cost.
Note: The Microchip name and logo, and PIC are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. chipKIT is a trademark of Microchip Technology Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies.
References:
1. Cuartielles, David (2010-02-17). "Öppnade hårdvaran och skapade Arduino". Metro Teknik: 10. Retrieved 2010-06-20.
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