Embedded Hardware units and

devices in a system
Honey Mol P.K
Hardware Units
PROCESSOR EMBEDDED INTO A SYSTEM:
● Embedded Processors in a System
A processor has two essential units.

(i)Program Flow Control Unit (or simply CU):-

- The CU includes a fetch unit for fetching instructions from the memory.
- It controls the sequential processing of instructions & communicates with
the rest of the system.
(ii)Execution Unit (EU):-
-The EU includes the ALU that undertakes arithmetic & logical operations on
bytes/words.
An Embedded System Processor can be of the following:
(1) General Purpose Processor
(2) Application specific Instruction Set Processor (ASIP)
(3) Single Purpose Processor
(4) GPP or ASIP cores integrated into VLSI circuit or an FPGA
(5) Application Specific System Processor (ASSP)
The following are important considerations when selecting a processor:

(1)Instruction set
(2)Maximum bits in an operand (8 or 16 or 32)
(3)Clock frequency in MHz
(4)Processing speed in MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
(5)Processor ability to solve complex algorithms
General Purpose Processor -Microprocessor
-A microprocessor is a single VLSI chip that has a CPU

-It may also have some other units (e.g., caches, floating point processing
arithmetic unit, pipelining units etc.) that are additionally present for the faster
processing of instructions.
-The important microprocessors used in the embedded systems are ARM, 80x86
and SPARC family of microprocessors.
MICROCONTROLLER (MICRO-COMPUTER)
-A microcontroller is a single-chip VLSI unit having limited computational
capabilities, possesses enhanced IO and a number of on-chip functional units.

-A microcontroller has processor, memory & several other hardware units

(peripherals) in it; these form the microcomputer part of the embedded system.
Single Purpose Processors
(1)Coprocessor (for e.g., math coprocessor, floating point processor etc.)

(2)Graphics processor.

(3) Pixel coprocessor

Power Source
-The supply has specific operation range of voltages in one of the following 4
power ranges:
5.0 V + 0.25 V; 3.3 V + 0.3 V; 2.0 V + 0.2 V and 1.5 V + 0.2 V
-The propagation delay in the gates is inversely proportional to operational
voltage; therefore, the 5 V system is used in most high performance systems.

-Certain systems do not have a power source of their own, so they are connect to
external power supply (Graphic Accelerator).
Clock Oscillator Circuit (Clocking Units)
-A processor needs a clock oscillator circuit as the clock controls the time for
executing an instruction.

-The clock controls the various clocking requirements of the CPU, system clocks
and the CPU machine cycles.
System Timers & Real-Time Clocks (RTC)
-To schedule the various system tasks and for real-time programming, a system
clock or an RTC is needed.

-These clocks drives the timers for various timing & counting needs in a system.
Reset Circuit, Power-up Reset & Watchdog-Timer Reset

-The reset circuit is a simple circuit (such as an RC circuit) whose output

connects to the reset pin of the processor.

-To reset a processor, the reset circuit should activate for a fixed period of a few
clock cycles & then deactivate thereby making the processor’s reset pin active
and then deactivate.
-Reset can also be activated by any one of the following:

(i)Software instruction (e.g. RST instruction)

(ii)Reset after a time-out by a programmed timer known as a watchdog timer.

Memory
1.Internal RAM (of size in bytes) as internal registers in a microcontroller,
temporary data storage (intermediate results/variables) & stack memory area.

2.Internal ROM/ PROM (of size in kB) for storing application programs in the
case of microcontrollers.

3. External RAM for the temporary data storage and stack in the case of
microprocessors.

4.Internal flash as ‘non-volatile’ memory to save the results after processing.

5. External ROM/ PROM for embedding software programs in almost all
embedded systems except in microcontroller based embedded systems

6.Caches or cache memory (for storing copies of frequently used instructions &
data)
Input, Output and IO Ports, IO Buses and IO interfaces

-The system gets inputs from physical devices through the input ports.

-A processor identifies each input port by its memory addresses called port
addresses.

-The system gets the inputs by the read operations at the port addresses.
The system has output ports through which it sends output bytes to the real
world.
-Each output port is identified by its memory addresses (called port addresses)

-The system sends the output by a write operation to the port address.

There are also general-purpose ports for both the input & output operations
(IO ports) - For eg., a touch screen
BUS

A system has to be connected to a number of other external devices or systems.

-A bus consists of a common set of lines to connect multiple devices, hardware

units and other similar systems for communication.

-A bus may be a serial or parallel bus that transfers data bit/bits.

-A “protocol” must be there to specify how signals communicate on the bus.

● DAC and ADC
● LCD, LED & Touchscreen Displays.
● Keypad/ Keyboard
Interrupt Handler
There can be a no. of interrupt sources in a processor.

-An interrupt may be a hardware signal that indicates the occurrence of an event.

-An interrupt may also occur through timers, serial communication etc.

-The interrupt may arise due to an illegal op-code fetch, a division by zero result
or an overflow during an ALU operation.

-A software interrupt may arise in an exceptional condition that may have

developed while running a program.
- The system may prioritize interrupt sources and service them accordingly.

- The processor's current program has to divert to a interrupt service routine to

complete that task on the occurrence of the interrupt.

- There is a on-chip unit for the interrupt handling mechanism in a

microcontroller.