Let’s take a closer look at how the Intelligent Analog PIC MCUs improve designs. Here is a layout of a portable sensor board. As can be seen, it has many components including ADCs, DACs, Op Amps, USB, and LCD in addition to a microcontroller. With a discrete ADC, the board size is increased to allow for shielding of the analog signals. If there are features like USB adjacent to analog, noise can be coupled, reducing the signal integrity. Now, because of the extra shielding that is needed, this creates complexity in the layout. The board may require extra layers to allow for the routing, which increases cost. Finally, more power planes may need to be added to ensure that signal integrity is maintained in-between and on the board layers, further increasing the complexity and cost. This complexity can often lead to multiple revisions of the board, wasting time and money, and delaying the product launch.