Microchip has introduced 18 pin variants of its 'enhanced mid-range core'.

The core are claimed to deliver 50% increase in performance over the firm's older mid-range cores and 14 additional instructions aimed at C code "resulting in up to 40% better code efficiency over previous-generation 8-bit PIC MCUs", said Microchip.

PIC16(L)F1826 and PIC16(L)F1827 include a capacitive touch-sensing module, dual I2C/SPI serial interfaces, a PWM and a digital signal modulator for adding data streams to a carriers.

Both come in 'LF' low power versions with 30nA typical standby at 1.8V.

For evaluation, there is the PICkit 2 18pin demo board

For more information, see http://www.microchip.com