2 About the Debugger

The MPLAB® ICD 5 In-Circuit Debugger/Programmer (DV164055) is Microchip’s latest fast and feature-rich emulation and programming tool for Microchip microcontrollers (MCUs), which include PIC®, dsPIC®, AVR® and SAM (Arm®) devices. It debugs and programs with the powerful and easy-to-use graphical user interface of MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

By default, the MPLAB ICD 5 connects to your PC through a high-speed USB 2.0 interface. However, you can also use Ethernet connections.

The MPLAB ICD 5 connects to targets using a flat cable, connected at one end to the debugger, and at the other to the target device communication.

The debugger communicates with devices that have built-in emulation circuitry, instead of special debugger chips, so executes code like an actual device. All available features of a given device are accessible interactively and can be set and modified by the MPLAB X IDE interface.

The MPLAB ICD 5 was developed for debugging embedded processors with rich debug facilities which differ from conventional system processors in the following aspects:

• Processors run at maximum speeds
• Multi-communication mediums (Windows®, Linux®, and macOS®)
• Advanced communication mediums and protocols
• Fast programming times

In addition to emulation functions, the MPLAB ICD 5 system also may be used as a device production programmer.