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1. Visit the homepage of some electronics vendors and compare their stock of
microcontrollers.

The Major Players in the Global Microcontroller Market:

 Freescale  STMicroelectronics  Atmel Corp

 Renesas Technology  Fairchild  Silicon Labs
 Intel Corp.  NXPs  National
 Samsung  Infineon  Maxim
 Texas Instruments Technologies  Microchip
 Fujitsu Europe  Analog Devices

Top vendors in the global microcontroller market

 Freescale: - freescale designs and acquired Free scale Semiconductor that

manufactures semiconductors. Cypress
Semiconductor designs, develops,
manufactures, and markets
programmable and mixed-signal
solutions globally. The major operating
segments are memory products division,
data communications division,
programmable systems division, and
emerging technologies division.
 Infineon Technologies: - Infineon
Technologies derives its revenue
majorly from four operating segments,
including automotive, chip card and
security, industrial power control, and
power management and multimarket.
The MCUs come under the automotive
segment.
 Microchip Technology: - Microchip
Technology’s major business segments
include analog, interface, memory
products, MCUs, mixed-signal and
timing products, and technology
licensing. The company is a leading
provider of MCUs and analog
semiconductors.
 NXP Technologies: - NXP
Technologies’ business segments
include high-performance mixed-signal
and standard products, of which, MCUs
come under the high-performance
mixed-signal category. The company
brought core strengths to the combined
organization, near field communication
from NXP Semiconductors and MCUs
from Free scale Semiconductor.
 Renesas Electronics: - Renesas
Electronics is a semiconductor
manufacturer based in Japan. They have
three major segments that are MCU
business, analog and power devices, and
the SoCs. The company offers
microcontrollers for automotive,
industrial equipment, and consumer
electronics applications.
 STMicoelectronics:- The core business
segments of STMicroelectronics include
analog and MEMS group, automotive
and discrete group, and microcontrollers
and digital ICs group. They design,
develop, manufacture, and market a
broad range of products.
 Texas Instruments: - Texas
Instruments designs and manufactures
semiconductors for electronics designers
and manufacturers globally. Texas
Instruments has two reportable segments
being analog and embedded processing.
It also provides low power and high-
performance MCUs with wired and
wireless connectivity options.

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A. Do all vendors offer the same controller families and manufacturers?

No b/c controller having on-chip peripherals like ROM, RAM, Processor, and clock. And
Microcontrollers are programmable devices. Microcontrollers are mostly used in embedded
systems, engineering projects. There are so many microcontroller families are available. Those
are 8051, PIC, AVR, ARM, etc

B. which controller families do you sees most often?

We have a list of '10 Best Microcontroller Boards for Engineers & Geeks',
1. Arduino Uno R3 Microcontroller Board. ...
2. Teensy 4.0. ...
3. Arduino Pro Mini 328. ...
4. ESP32 Microcontroller Board. ...
5. Raspberry Pi 4. ...
6. MBED LPC1768. ...
7. BeagleBone Black. ...
8. ESP8266 Microcontroller Board

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 2. What is an embedded system?

As its name suggests, Embedded means something that is attached to another thing. An
embedded system can be thought of as a computer hardware system having software embedded
in it. An embedded system can be an independent system or it can be a part of a large system. An
embedded system is a microcontroller or microprocessor based system which is designed to
perform a specific task. For example, a fire alarm is an embedded system; it will sense only
smoke.

What is a real-time system?

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system that guarantees a certain

capability within a specified time constraint. For example, an operating system might be
designed to ensure that a certain object was available for a robot on an assembly line. In what is
usually called a "hard" real-time operating system, if the calculation could not be performed for
making the object available at the designated time, the operating system would terminate with a
failure. In a "soft" real-time operating system, the assembly line would continue to function but
the production output might be lower as objects failed to appear at their designated time, causing
the robot to be temporarily unproductive. Some real-time operating systems are created for a
special application and others are more general purpose

3. Assume that you have a task that requires 16 inputs. 15 outputs and 3 timers. You
also need 512 bytes to store data.
We use 8051 controllers for this application
A timer module for an 8051 Microcontroller is designed from the ground up. It could potentially
be integrated into a larger 8051 for use in lunar and Martian missions. It follows through a
synchronous digital design flow from HDL code through layout verification. The timer shows
functionality at 100MHz with some minor glitches.

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Compare Harvard and van-Neumann architecture.

Difference between Von Neumann and Harvard Architecture

Point of
Harvard Architecture Von Neumann Architecture
Comparison
In Harvard architecture, the CPU In Von-Neumann architecture, there is no
Is connected with both data memory separate data and program memory. Instead,
(RAM) and program memory (ROM), a single memory connection is given to the
separately. CPU.

Arrangement

It requires more hardware since it will In contrast to the Harvard architecture, this
Hardware
be requiring separate data and address requires less hardware since only a common
requirements bus for each memory. memory needs to be reached.

Von-Neumann Architecture requires less

Space This requires more space.
space.
requirements

Speed of execution is faster because the Speed of execution is slower since it cannot

Speed of
processor fetches data and instructions fetch the data and instructions at the same
execution simultaneously. time.

It results in wastage of space

Since if the space is left in the
data memory then the instructions Space is not wasted because the space of the
Space usage memory cannot use the space of data memory can be utilized by the
the data memory and vice-versa. instructions memory and vice-versa.

Controlling becomes complex since data Controlling becomes simpler since either
Controlling and instructions are to be fetched data or instructions are to be fetched at a
simultaneously. time.

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4. Why microcontroller is consider as a microcomputer

Microcontroller contains a microprocessor. In the same way: a microcomputer contains a

microprocessor as well. Some microcomputers may also contain built-in
microcontrollers

A microcomputer consists of microprocessor, memory, input device and output device. A

microcontroller is a programmable device that includes microprocessor, memory and I/O
signal lines on a single chip, fabricated using VLSI technology. Microcontrollers are also
known as single microcomputers.

5. Identify the difference between EPROM, EEPROM and flash memory types.
 EPROM (Erasable PROM) had a little window on the top, which allowed it to be erased
using a UV light. But it took around 20 minutes to erase one of these, so one usually had
a couple of dozen chips and you would erase a bunch at a time.
 EEPROM (Electrically-erasable PROM) made it possible to both program and erase the
chip electrically.
 Flash memory (which is used to store the code in today’s microcontrollers) is just a
variation of EEPROM

. They differ in the way they are erased — EEPROMs can be erased in single bytes,
whereas flash memory is erased in larger blocks (e.g. 4K bytes). EEPROM requires two
transistors structure per bit to erase a dedicated byte in the memory, while flash memory
has one transistor per bit to erase a region of the memory.

EEPROM usually can permit more erase/write cycles than flash memory.

In addition to separate memory chips, microcontrollers have also been produced in ROM,
PROM, EPROM, EEPROM and flash versions. For example, the Microchip PIC16F84A
Is a newer flash replacement for the PIC16C84, which used EEPROM for its 1K x 14-bit
words of program memory. The PIC16F84A still contains 64 bytes of EEPROM for long-
term data storage, because the flash memory is limited to 10,000 erase/write cycles,
whereas the EEPROM portion is good for 10,000,000

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