Buses

A bus is a high-speed internal connection. Buses are used to send control signals and data between the
processor and other components.
Three types of bus are used.

 Address bus - carries memory addresses from the processor to other components such as primary storage
and input/output devices. The address bus is unidirectional.
 Data bus - carries the data between the processor and other components. The data bus is bidirectional.
 Control bus - carries control signals from the processor to other components. The control bus also carries
the clock's pulses. The control bus is unidirectional.

Von Neumann Architecture:

Von Neumann Architecture is a digital computer architecture whose design is based on the concept of
stored program computers where program data and instruction data are stored in the same memory. This
architecture was designed by the famous mathematician and physicist John Von Neumann in 1945.

Harvard Architecture:
Harvard Architecture is the digital computer architecture whose design is based on the concept where
there are separate storage and separate buses (signal path) for instruction and data. It was basically
developed to overcome the bottleneck of Von Neumann Architecture.
Difference between Von Neumann and Harvard Architecture :
VON NEUMANN ARCHITECTURE HARVARD ARCHITECTURE
It is ancient computer architecture based on stored It is modern computer architecture based on
program computer concept. Harvard Mark I relay based model.
Same physical memory address is used for Separate physical memory address is used for
instructions and data. instructions and data.
There is common bus for data and instruction Separate buses are used for transferring data and
transfer. instruction.
Two clock cycles are required to execute single An instruction is executed in a single cycle.
instruction.
It is cheaper in cost. It is costly than Von Neumann Architecture.
CPU can not access instructions and read/write at CPU can access instructions and read/write at the
the same time. same time.
It is used in personal computers and small It is used in micro controllers and signal
computers. processing.

Types of Microcontrollers
Microcontrollers are divided into various categories based on memory, architecture, bits
and instruction sets. Following is the list of their types −
Bit
Based on bit configuration, the microcontroller is further divided into three categories.
  8-bit microcontroller − This type of microcontroller is used to execute arithmetic
and logical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication division, etc. For
example, Intel 8031 and 8051 are 8 bits microcontroller.
 16-bit microcontroller − This type of microcontroller is used to perform arithmetic
and logical operations where higher accuracy and performance is required. For
example, Intel 8096 is a 16-bit microcontroller.
32-bit microcontroller − This type of microcontroller is generally used in automatically
controlled appliances like automatic operational machines, medical appliances, etc

Family of Microcontrollers and their specifications:

There are different microcontroller families like 8051, PIC, AVR, ARM.

 8051 Microcontroller Features:

8051 microcontroller is designed by Intel in 1981. It is an 8-bit microcontroller. It is built

with 40 pins DIP (dual inline package), 4kb of ROM storage and 128 bytes of RAM
storage, 2 16-bit timers. It consists of are four parallel 8-bit ports, which are programmable
as well as addressable as per the requirement.
An 8051 microcontroller comes bundled with the following features −
 4KB bytes on-chip program memory (ROM)
 128 bytes on-chip data memory (RAM)
 Four register banks
 128 user defined software flags
 8-bit bidirectional data bus
 16-bit unidirectional address bus
 32 general purpose registers each of 8-bit
  16 bit Timers (usually 2, but may have more or less)
 Three internal and two external Interrupts
 Four 8-bit ports,(short model have two 8-bit ports)
 16-bit program counter and data pointer
 8051 may also have a number of special features such as UARTs, ADC, Op-amp, etc.

 PIC Microcontroller Features:

PIC is a peripheral interface controller, developed by the general instrument’s microelectronics, in the
year 1993. It is controlled by the software. They could be programmed to complete many tasks and control
a generation line and many more. PIC microcontrollers are finding their way into new applications like
smartphones, audio accessories, video gaming peripherals, and advanced medical devices.
There are many PICs, started with PIC16F84 and PIC16C84. But these were the only affordable flash
PICs. Microchip has recently introduced flash chips with types that are much more attractive, such as
16F628, 16F877, and 18F452. The 16F877 is around twice the price of the old 16F84 but has eight times
the code size, much more RAM, much more I/O pins, a UART, A/D converter, and a lot more.

Features of PIC16F877
The features of pic16f877 include the following.
 High-performance RISC CPU
 Up to 8K x 14 words of FLASH program memory
 35 Instructions (fixed-length encoding-14-bit)
 368×8 static RAM-based data memory
 Up to 256 x 8 bytes of EEPROM data memory
 Interrupt capability (up to 14 sources)
 Three addressing modes (direct, indirect, relative)
 Power-on reset (POR)
 Harvard architecture memory
 Power saving SLEEP mode
 Wide operating voltage range: 2.0V to 5.5V
 High sink / source current: 25mA
 Accumulator based machine

Peripheral Features
3 timer/counters (programmable pre-scalars)
 Timer0, Timer2 is 8-bit timer/counter with 8-bit pre-scalar
 Timer1 is 16-bit, can be incremented during sleep via external crystal/clock
Two capture, compare, PWM modules
 Input capture function records the Timer1 count on a pin transition
 A PWM function output is a square wave with a programmable period and duty cycle.
10-bit 8 channel analog-to-digital converter
USART with 9-bit address detection
Synchronous serial port with master mode and I2C Master/Slave
The 8-bit parallel slave port

Analog Features
 10-bit, up to 8-channel Analog-to-Digital Converter (A/D)
 Brown-out Reset (BOR)
 Analog Comparator module (Programmable input multiplexing from device inputs and comparator
outputs are externally accessible)

Advantages of PIC
 It is a RISC design
 Its code is extremely efficient, allowing the PIC to run with typically less program memory than its larger
competitors
 It is a low cost, high clock speed.

 AVR Microcontroller Features:

 Multifunction
 Multiple internal oscillators
 Flash memory up to 256 KB
 Internal data EEPROM up to 4 KB
 Internal SRAM up to 16 KB
 Two timers are 8 bit, and one timer is 16 bit
Applications of AVR Microcontroller
 For signal sensing
 Data acquisition
 Motion control
 For displays on LCD
 To interface motors, GSM and GPS
 To atomized heavy machinery

 ARM Microcontroller Features:

 RISC Architecture.
 All instruction are 32 bit long.
 Most instruction execute in a single cycle.
 32 bit and 8 bit data type.
 32 bit general purpose processor.
 High performance, Low power consumption and small size.
 Conditional execution of all programme.
 Has all advantage of 32 bit core.
Applications of ARM Processor:
Consumer electronic gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, multimedia players, and other mobile
devices such as wearables all employ A-R-M processors