Microcontroller versus Microprocessor
What is the difference between a Microprocessor and Microcontroller? By microprocessor is meant the general purpose Microprocessors such as Intel's X86 family (8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, and the Pentium) or Motorola's 680X0 family (68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, 68040, etc). These microprocessors contain no RAM, no ROM, and no I/O ports on the chip itself. For this reason, they are commonly referred to as general-purpose Microprocessors.
A system designer using a general-purpose microprocessor such as the Pentium or the 68040 must add RAM, ROM, I/O ports, and timers externally to make them functional. Although the addition of external RAM, ROM, and I/O ports makes these systems bulkier and much more expensive, they have the advantage of versatility such that the designer can decide on the amount of RAM, ROM and I/O ports needed to fit the task at hand. This is not the case with Microcontrollers.
A Microcontroller has a CPU (a microprocessor) in addition to a fixed amount of RAM, ROM, I/O ports, and a timer all on a single chip. In other words, the processor, the RAM, ROM, I/O ports and the timer are all embedded together on one chip; therefore, the designer cannot add any external memory, I/O ports, or timer to it. The fixed amount of on-chip ROM, RAM, and number of I/O ports in Microcontrollers makes them ideal for many applications in which cost and space are critical.
In many applications, for example a TV remote control, there is no need for the computing power of a 486 or even an 8086 microprocessor. These applications most often require some I/O operations to read signals and turn on and off certain bits.
Microcontrollers for Embedded Systems
In the Literature discussing microprocessors, we often see the term Embedded System. Microprocessors and Microcontrollers are widely used in embedded system products. An embedded system product uses a microprocessor (or Microcontroller) to do one task only. A printer is an example of embedded system since the processor inside it performs one task only; namely getting the data and printing it. Contrast this with a Pentium based PC. A PC can be used for any number of applications such as word processor, print-server, bank teller terminal, Video game, network server, or Internet terminal. Software for a variety of applications can be loaded and run. of course the reason a pc can perform myriad tasks is that it has RAM memory and an operating system that loads the application software into RAM memory and lets the CPU run it.
In an Embedded system, there is only one application software that is typically burned into ROM. An x86 PC contains or is connected to various embedded products such as keyboard, printer, modem, disk controller, sound card, CD-ROM drives, mouse, and so on. Each one of these peripherals has a Microcontroller inside it that performs only one task. For example, inside every mouse there is a Microcontroller to perform the task of finding the mouse position and sending it to the PC. Table 1-1 lists some embedded products.
