What is Microcontroller

Hello dear readers I hope you all are having fun in your life. In today’s post, we will discuss What is Microcontroller.  The creation of a microcontroller was done with the production of metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors. or MOSFET. The first time in 1959 it was created by Mohamed M.Atalla and Barwon when they were working at bell labs and ist time it was commonly explained in 1960. In this year Atalla also gave instructions on MOS ICs that is IC chips created with metal oxide field-effect transistors.

Over time in 1964 metal oxides, and chips started usage of large numbers of transistors and manufacturing costs also decreased than the bipolar boards. The chips used in the 1960s became more advanced and used hundreds of transistors leading to LSI which was according to Moore’s law. The usage of LSI chips in computing industries was the foundation of microprocessors since engineers started created a complete processor of a computer with the  MOS large-scale integration chip. By using the MOS large-scale integration the ist multi-chip microprocessor 4-phase system ALq was created in 1969 and Garrett Airesearch MP944 was created in 1970. In 1971 ist single CIO microprocessor was Intel 404 created. It was manufactured by the Federico Faggin with the use of the silicon gate MOS technique. In today’s post, we will look at microcontrollers working, applications, types, pinout, and some related parameters. So let’s get started with What is Microcontroller.

What is Microcontroller

• The microcontroller or MCU is a small-sized computer assembled on one MOS IC chip. In other words, it is like the Soc or system on chip which consists of a microcontroller as its one element.

• In a microcontroller, there is one or more one central processing units having memory and input outputs devises that can easily be programmed.
• The memory used in the microcontroller is of ferroelectric RAM, NOR flash OTP(One Time Programmable) Rom, and also random access memory.
• It is usually used in embedded applications, in personal computers, and some other general-purpose applications.
• The devices that are controlled automatically used microcontrollers Examples of these devices are automobile engine control systems, remote control instruments, toys, electronic devices, etc.
• By decreasing the physical size and price of such a device that uses separate memory input-output devices and microprocessors microcontrollers is less expensive and control devices and process digitally.
• For controlling of non-digital electronic system mixed-signal microcontrollers are used.
• Some types of microcontrollers operate on 4-bit words and use less value of frequency close to four kilohertz for less power usage applications.

Microcontroller Vs Desktop Computer

• If we compare microcontrollers with the desktop computer we come to know that the size of a desktop computer is larger than the microcontroller.
• The operation speed of the microcontroller is less than the normal PC.
• With some differences, there is some similarities between these two microcontrollers that have CPUs like normal computers.
• The Central processing unit of the microcontroller has different word lengths ranging from four-bit to sixty-four-bit.

Microcontroller Vs Microprocessor

• It is considered that both microprocessors and microcontrollers are the same devices but it is not true both are different devices.
• The basic difference between them is that in microprocessors different external devices are used for communications but in the microcontroller, there is no exterior device is used but all components are inbuilt in the structure of the microcontroller. Due to this size and cost of a microcontroller is less.

• The microprocessor is mostly used in laptops’ personal computers and notepads while the microcontroller is only used in an embedded system.
• The clock given to the microprocessor has a larger speed than the clock of the microprocessor and performs more operations. Microprocessors can operate on the frequency of one gigahertz.

Features of Microcontroller

• The generally used microcontrollers are exits in complicated structures and can operate on a word length of sixty-four-bit.
• The already built elements of the microcontroller are EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory), RAM (Random Access Memory), ROM, different timer input and output devices ports and reset buttons.
• The usage of RAm is to store data and ROM stores different programs and some other parameters.
• For macro instructions, MCs are created with the use of CISC architecture.
• For replacement of small instruction macro types instruction is used in the microcontroller.
• The currently used MCU uses less power than the older MCUs which operate on large power.
• The voltage operating range of MCU is 1.8 volts to 5.5 volts.
• The modern microcontroller provides features like EPROM and EEPROM which wich was missing in older versions.

Microcontroller PIN Out

• There are forty common pinouts of the microcontroller which are described here.

Pinout 1 to 8

• These pinouts do not perform any function.

Pinout  40

• Vcc: It is input, where the power supply of the microcontroller is given usually plus five volts, are applied.

Pinout 20

• Vss: This pinout is ground terminals.

Pinout 32 to 39

• These pinouts are called port zero and operate as an input-output port. Lower order data is multiplexed is through this pinout.

Pinout 31

• It is ALE or address latch enables pinout which is used to demultiplex the address-data signal of port zero.

Pinout 30

• It is EA or external access input pinout that used to enable or disable the exterior memory interfacing. If external memory is not connected it remains high.

Pinout 29

• It is a PSEn pinout that used for reading of data from exterior program memory.

Pinout 21 to 28

• these pinouts are called port two. This port operates as an input/ output port. Large order address bus signal multiplexed through this port.

Pinout 18 and 19

• Exterior crystal is linked with the use of these pinouts and provides a clock to the system.

Pinout 10 to 17

• These pinouts make port three. This port does some functions like interrupts, timer input control signal, etc.

Pinout 9

• This reset pinout.

Architecture of a Microcontroller

CPU

• CPU is a microcontroller brain and comes with an ALU and control unit. The CPU reads, decodes, and applies instructions for performing different functions such as logic and data operation and mathematical operations

Memory

• There are two common methods used for computations: program memory and data memory. Program memory comes with instructions from the CPU. Data memory stores data temporarily for applications of instructions.
• Program memory is ROM and data memory is called RAM. Data memory is also called Read Write Memory (R/W M).

I/O Ports

• The input-output ports are used for the connection of different devices. Input devices such as switches, give input signals to the CPU in binary data.

Bus

• The BUS of the controller is connected to wires that make the connection of the CPU with other devices such as the Memory unit, ports, and other components of the controller.

Timers/Counters

• Timers are used to add time delay and counting of different occurrences at the time of operations. Timers and counters have different functions such as Pulse Width Modulation, Clock Control, etc.

Serial Port

• Serial ports are used for serial communication process and UART is used for serial communications.

Interrupts

• Interrupts used for handling external, inner, and other hardware or software

Types of microcontrollers

8-bit microcontroller.

• This controller has features to transmit 8 bits for a certain time. It uses low power than other larger modules

16-bit microcontroller.

• It offers high clock speed and memory higher than 8-bit controllers. Its working speed is double that of 8-bit microcontrollers.

32-bit microcontroller.

• It is also high-speed and comes with a 16-bit capacity for processing. But it used higher power

MCS-51

• Intel made this single-chip controller in 1980. This controller is called 8051. It supports CISC and comes in different sizes such as  8-, 16- and 32-bit data sizes.

AVR. 

• This board was made in 1996 by Atmel and comes with an 8-bit chip. it is a type of microcontroller that uses an on-chip flash computer for storing programs.

Microcontroller	Features	Technical specifications	Programming language	Compiler/IDE
Atmel ATtiny85	Pins: 8 GPIO pins: 6Two timers Analog to digital converter512B RAM 8KB SRAM 512 Byte EEPROM Clock speed: 20 MHz	Operating temperature: -40°C to +85°COperating voltage: 2.7V to 5.5V	Arduino C/C++,	AVR GCC, MPLAB XC8, IAR Embedded WorkbenchMPLAB X IDE, Microchip Studio,
Espressif ESP8266	Pins: 30 Clock Speed: 80 MHz UART, I2C, and SPI communicationGPIO pins: 16 Flash Memory: 4 MB SRAM: 64 K	Supply voltage: 7V-12V Operating voltage: 3.3V	Arduino	Arduino IDE
Intel 8051	Pins: 40 Full-duplex UART communication4KB ROM 128 bytes RAM	Operating voltage: 5V Operating temperature: -0°C to +70°CSupply voltage: 2.5V to 5.5V	BASIC, C\C++	CX51 C Compiler, Workbench, IAR Embedded BASCOM-AVR
Texas Instruments MSP430	GPIO pins: 51 Analog to digital converter Real-time clock UART, I2C, and SPI communicationNon-volatile memory: 64 kB RAM: 2 kB	Active mode: 330 µA at 1 MHz, 3 V. Operating voltage: 2.5V to 5.5V	C/C++	C/C++compiler, MSP430 – GCC, BASCOM-AVR
PJRC Teensy 3.2	Pins: 34 RAM: 64 kB EEPROM: 2 kB Pulse width modulation Seven timersGPIO pins: 34 32 bit ARM Cortex-M4 72 MHz CPU Flash memory: 256 kB USB, UART, SPI, I2C, and I2S communication Real-time clock	Supply voltage: 3.6V to 6.0V Operating voltage: 3.3V	C/C++, Python Adapted Arduino,	AVR-GCC, MicroPythonBASCOM-AVR,
STMicroelectronics STM32	GPIO pins: 51-140 USB, Twelve 16-bit timers Two 32-bit timers Temperature sensor, Analog to digital converterUART, SPI, I2C, and I2S communication Digital to analog converter Real time clock	Supply voltage: 1.7V to 3.6V Operating voltage: 3.3V	C	STM32CubeIDE, Segger Embedded, Studio Arm Keil MDK, PlatformIO IDE, , SW4STM32
Silicon Labs EFM32	GPIO pins: 18-26 RAM: 32 kB USART, I2C, and SPI communicationARM Cortex-M3 CPU Flash memory: 512 kB Analog to digital converter	Operating temperature: -40°C to +85°C Operating voltage: 1.98V to 3.8V	C	GNU ARM C Compiler

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That is a detailed post about the microcontroller if you have any further queries ask in the comments. Thanks for reading.