The Microchip low-cost, high performance, 8 bit, fully static CMOS microcontrollers employs a RISC architecture with only 33 single word/single cycle instructions. All instructions are single cycle 1 ms except for program branches which take two cycles. The PIC12C5 series delivers performance an order of magnitude higher than its competitors in the same price category. The 12-bit wide instructions are highly symmetrical resulting in 21 code compression over other 8 bit microcontrollers in its class. The easy to use and easy to remember instruction set reduces development time significantly.

Power on reset (POR)
Device Reset Timer (DRT)
Watchdog timer (WDT) with its own on chip RC oscillator for reliable operation
Programmable code-protection
1,000,000 erase/write cycle EEPROM data memory
EEPROM data retention > 40 years
power saving SLEEP mode
Wake-up from SLEEP on pin change
Internal weak pull-ups on I/O pins
Internal pull-up on MCLR pin