What is an 8-bit microcontroller?

What is an 8-bit microcontroller?

The term “8-bit” generally refers to the bit-width of the CPU. Thus an 8-bit microcontroller is one which contains an 8-bit CPU. This means that internal operations are done on 8-bit numbers, that stored variables are in 8-bit blocks, and external I/O (inputs/outputs) is accessed via 8-bit busses.

What is CMOS 8-bit microcontroller?

The Z51F0410 is an advanced CMOS 8-bit microcontroller featuring 4K bytes of on-chip Flash and 256 Bytes SRAM, as well as Data EEPROM. This powerful MCU provides a highly flexible and cost effective solution to many embedded control applications.

How is 8051 a 8 bit microcontroller?

The 8051 is called an 8-bit microcontroller because it processes 8 bits of data every machine cycle. All assembly instructions happen 8-bits at a time. Also, all internal registers are 8-bit in size and all read and write operations happen 8-bits at a time.

What is 8-bit and 16 bit pointer in 8051?

Why does the stack pointer holds only 8 bit address in 8051 and whereas the program counter holds the 16 bit address? that is the way it was designed. It has only 128 bytes of RAM, so an 8-bit stack pointer is enough. Using external RAM is possible, but requires a special instruction (MOVX).

What is a CMOS microcontroller?

CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit (IC) chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips (including CMOS BIOS), and other digital logic circuits. Two important characteristics of CMOS devices are high noise immunity and low static power consumption.

What makes 8051 an 8-bit microcontroller?

How does an 8-bit computer work?

8-bit CPUs use an 8-bit data bus and can therefore access 8 bits of data in a single machine instruction. The address bus is typically a double octet (16 bits) wide, due to practical and economical considerations. This implies a direct address space of 64 KB (65,536 bytes) on most 8-bit processors.

What is the architecture of the 8051 microcontroller?

The architecture of the 8051 microcontroller can be understood from the block diagram. It has Harward architecture with RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) concept. The block diagram of 8051 microcontroller is shown. It consists of: 128 bytes of RAM and 4kB of ROM and four parallel I/O ports each of 8-bit width

What are the components of a microcontroller?

1 ALU 2 Program Counter (PC) 3 Registers 4 Timers and Counters 5 Internal RAM and ROM 6 Four General Purpose Parallel Input/Output Ports 7 Interrupt Control 8 Serial Data Communication 9 PSW (Program Status Word) 10 Data Pointer (DPTR)

What is an interrupt in a microcontroller?

An interrupt can either be an internal or external event which suspends the microcontroller for a while and thereby obstructs the sequential flow of a program. There are two ways of giving interrupts to a microcontroller – one is by sending software instructions and the other is by sending hardware signals.

Why is a microcontroller called an on-chip program memory?

Since the program written into ROM is fixed that is, it cannot be altered or changed; as a result the operation of the system remains constant (unchanged) regardless of the instructions given to it. Hence, a microcontroller can be thought of a device containing on-chip program memory. A microcontroller can also be referred as a ‘microcomputer’.