PIC18F87K22 Datasheet, PDF (109/548 Pages) Microchip Technology – 64/80-Pin, High-Performance, 1-Mbit Enhanced Flash Microcontrollers with 12-Bit A/D and nanoWatt XLP Technology

PIC18F87K22 FAMILY
7.0 FLASH PROGRAM MEMORY
The Flash program memory is readable, writable and
erasable during normal operation over the entire VDD
range.
A read from program memory is executed on one byte
at a time. For execution of a write to or erasure of
program memory:
• Memory of 32 Kbytes and 64 Kbytes
(PIC18FX5K22 and PIC18FX6K22 devices) –
Blocks of 64 bytes
• Memory of 128 Kbytes (PIC18FX7K22 devices) –
Blocks of 124 bytes
Writing or erasing program memory will cease
instruction fetches until the operation is complete. The
program memory cannot be accessed during the write
or erase, therefore, code cannot execute. An internal
programming timer terminates program memory writes
and erases.
A value written to program memory does not need to be
a valid instruction. Executing a program memory
location that forms an invalid instruction results in a
NOP.
7.1 Table Reads and Table Writes
In order to read and write program memory, there are
two operations that allow the processor to move bytes
between the program memory space and the data RAM:
• Table Read (TBLRD)
• Table Write (TBLWT)
The program memory space is 16 bits wide, while the
data RAM space is 8 bits wide. Table reads and table
writes move data between these two memory spaces
through an 8-bit register (TABLAT).
Table read operations retrieve data from program
memory and place it into the data RAM space.
Figure 7-1 shows the operation of a table read with
program memory and data RAM.
Table write operations store data from the data memory
space into holding registers in program memory. The
procedure to write the contents of the holding registers
into program memory is detailed in Section 7.5 “Writing
to Flash Program Memory”. Figure 7-2 shows the
operation of a table write with program memory and data
RAM.
Table operations work with byte entities. A table block
containing data, rather than program instructions, is not
required to be word-aligned. Therefore, a table block can
start and end at any byte address. If a table write is being
used to write executable code into program memory,
program instructions will need to be word-aligned.
FIGURE 7-1:
TABLE READ OPERATION
Instruction: TBLRD*
Table Pointer⁽¹⁾
TBLPTRU TBLPTRH TBLPTRL
Program Memory
Program Memory
(TBLPTR)
Table Latch (8-bit)
TABLAT
Note 1: Table Pointer register points to a byte in program memory.
 2010 Microchip Technology Inc.
Preliminary
DS39960B-page 109