EE3803 -- Lecture 1

Introduction to Microprocessor Systems

EE3803-L01P01

What Is A Microprocessor System?

EE3803-L01P02

Well.......

The Simple Answer:

It's an electronic system in which a microprocessor plays an important role. Duh!

Why Do We Care?
Because microprocessors are absolutely everywhere! without interacting with microprocessors. You simply cannot exist anymore

You can't start a car, microwave a cup of

coffee, turn on a television or CD player, or look at a digital watch without interacting with a microprocessor.

If you don't understand them, your capabilities as an engineer will be severely limited!

But What Is A Microprocessor System?

Actually, you already know. You just don't know you know!

It's simply a fairly complicated state machine!

If you passed EE3801, you already know just about everything there is to know about microprocessor systems. All we do here is add significantly more wires and show you

how to manage the complexity to solve some really cool problems.

EE3803-L01P03

Let's Start From The Top

Any useful microprocessor-based computer system must have:

Memory To store programs. To store data.

I/O Devices LEDs 7-Segment Displays Video Monitors Relays Motors Keyboards

To allow information to be input and output.

A Processing Unit Which is a complex state machine that manipulates data and controls IO devices according to the program stored in memory.

EE3803-L01P04

I Still Say You Know (Almost) Everything!

+5V

Output Next State Logic Flip Flops Logic

Where's The Memory? Where's The IO? Where's The Processor? Is This A Microprocessor System?

EE3803-L01P05

Not Really, But...

It is a basic form of a computer. A microprocessor system is usually far more flexible than a simple state machine. One part

of this complexity is that the function of a microprocessor based system is determined by a program that controls the system operation. the system performs! Change the program, and you change the function

main() { printf("Hello World\n"); } "C" Compiler Assembler Linker

"Fantasy"

"Reality"

Memory

CPU

HELLO WORLD IO Interface

EE3803-L01P06

Here's Where Things Get Complicated

A microprocessor does not know anything about "C" or Assembly Language. state machine.

It's just a big, ugly, The

It only looks at a pattern of 1s and 0s and reacts by spitting back 1's and 0's.

problem is that it spits out a lot of them -- fast!

Address

Data

FFFF: 1101 0110 1100 1001 FFFE: 0010 1001 1111 0010
Memory

Timing Is Everything!

0002: 1011 1100 0011 0101 0001: 0000 0000 1000 0001 0000: 1010 0101 1010 0101
HELLO Data Address Bus CPU IO Interface Bus WORLD

IO Clock Bus

EE3803-L01P07